“Will you please let him go? He thinks you’re trying to hurt me.”
Louis-Cesare’s face lost its amusement. “You do well enough at that yourself,” he said shortly. Stinky was bundled into the bathroom for the second time and Louis-Cesare turned to regard me with crossed arms. I suppose the gesture was an expression of impatience or exasperation, but all my brain could manage to focus on was that towel. It looked to be in immanent peril of falling off entirely, barely clinging to the muscular swell of his hips—smooth-skinned hips glistening with water and flecked with soap suds.
I tried to look away, but the man was perfection, beauty given a face and body. The line of his throat, the sleek muscular sweep of his torso, were pure masculine sensuality. And in the dim light filtering in through the curtains, he almost looked like he’d been oiled. My mouth went dry.
“Dorina!” Louis-Cesare had moved, one of those lightning-fast transitions that vamps use when they can’t be bothered to appear human. He was by the bed staring down at me, and that was definitely exasperation on his face. “Have you heard anything I have said?”
“Not really.”
I suddenly felt the press of the intimate little room, with its lush carpets, gaudy gold-papered walls and rich, dark furniture. A breeze from the open window shifted around my legs, pushing into the sheet covering me. It was a tentative little thing, just a filmy tickle, but I was cold and he stood there still flushed from the heat of his bath. The soap smelled good on him, and the faint musk rising from all that warm skin smelled better. I shivered, hard.
Louis-Cesare’s breathing had roughened as my gaze lingered on his body. “You will not distract me!” His words were a surprise, because that hadn’t even occurred to me. Hadn’t, but should have. The last thing I wanted was to discuss my dreams, especially the last one.
A smile flirted with my lips. I stroked a hand up the interior of one strong thigh, shivering at the whiplash of sensation, the blaze of skin on skin. “You mean like this?”
I found myself on my back, with Louis-Cesare above me, his eyes flashing blue gray lightning. He looked powerful, hard, aroused. Stunning. “I do not believe that this was one of your fits, Dorina. There was no provocation—”
I took advantage of his nearness to run a hand down his chest and along the tight belly, until I hit the terrycloth barrier just below the curve of his waist. He grabbed my hands before I could tug the towel off, and leaned over me, trapping them on either side of my head. “So what are you planning to do?” I grinned up at him. “Tie me to the bed?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Louis-Cesare looked like a man who has finally heard a good idea. “Don’t you dare!”
My arms were pushed over my head. I would have protested, but the action brought that perfect mouth close enough to kiss, so I did. He tasted right the way water tastes right—simple, necessary.
Louis-Cesare leaned into the kiss for a moment; then tore away, his eyes blazing with something wild and seductive. The look alone was enough to send a wash of desire through me. It didn’t help that he was close enough for me to reach out and tangle his hair in my fists and pull him close, close enough to kiss again, close enough to make him moan. Just thinking about it made me ache, a sharp knife of want twisting in my stomach. I curled my hands around slats in the headboard to keep from grabbing him.
“I have found nothing else that succeeds with you!” The voice was deep and rough, with only a faint echo of his usual smooth tones. “I make logical arguments, but you do not hear.”
“Don’t,” I warned him in a strangled voice. “I’ve had a hard month. I ache in more places than I can count. The last thing I need is a lecture.”
He hesitated for a moment; then his palms smoothed back down my arms to cup my face. The usually so-controlled features were strangely tender. Those blue eyes met mine, asking, seeking. “What do you need?”
I should have laughed, should have thrown it back in his face as he did once to me. But my gaze had fixed on his mouth, on those impossibly enticing full lips. “Guess.”
The softness of his mouth was a surprise. I leaned into the insistent sweetness of the kiss, loving the way his lips caressed mine, how he managed to infuse the lightest of touches with a longing that made me weak. I let go of the slats, wanting to touch him, but he curved one of his hands over both of mine, curling them tightly around the headboard. For some reason I didn’t protest, possibly because his other hand had found my hip and slowly moved down until it cupped my backside. His mouth had moved along my jaw to my neck as his hand caressed me, as gently as if I were made of glass.
He didn’t ask what was wrong; he must have known I wouldn’t tell him. He simply resumed kissing his way downward, until my heart beat rapidly beneath his lips. He met only sleep-warm skin because the sheet had at some point slipped to puddle around my waist. “Everything about you is provoking,” he breathed. “Your voice saying outrageous things, your body striding up and down, giving me orders, and your taste—”
The thought skittered across my mind that if this was foreplay, sex with Louis-Cesare would probably kill me. I felt the headboard crack under my hands and decided that there were worse ways to go. And then it happened again. Images flooded my brain, richly detailed and absolutely breathtaking.
Dorina, naked on a bed, head dropped back to expose that lovely throat, luscious mouth open in soft moans, sweat trickling between those perfect breasts, glistening on a waist so tiny I could span it with my hands. There is no part of her I haven’t ached to touch: the soft roundness of her cheek, her beautiful throat, her breasts. I am possessed by an angel with ridiculous hair, flashing eyes and a devil’s mouth.
Seeing myself through Louis-Cesare’s eyes, feeling his emotions as well as my own, left me speechless—and extremely confused. He dropped his head farther, to where the sheet was covering my lower body. I was about to ask him what was happening, when he traced my lower stomach with his tongue, then, with no more warning than a gleam in his eyes, almost roughly plunged it into my navel.
It was a shock, delightful, delicious and unanticipated, sending liquid shivers to the pit of my stomach. No one had ever brought me so quickly and deeply into pleasure, but suddenly my whole body convulsed with it. His lips moved slightly downward, finding the flesh below my belly button, and his warm breath against me made me squirm. His eyes had bled to liquid silver. They held a question, but I couldn’t find my voice. I managed to nod, and was rewarded with a smile, heart-stoppingly sweet, as he slowly eased down the sheet.
He stroked the backs of my thighs with his fingertips and I lifted up, letting him ease off my panties. He paused to kiss my lower stomach before baring me completely. His thumbs found the sensitive skin at the backs of my knees, and big, warm hands smoothed up the insides of my thighs in a butterfly touch. They made a more purposeful caress down, in an unspoken appeal. I opened for him.
Louis-Cesare took his time, stroking, kissing and licking a trail upward from my knees. Then his head dipped between my legs and that hot tongue flicked higher. That rough liquid texture explored me, but only briefly, shallowly, teasingly.
The velvets under her are not as soft as her skin. Closing my mouth over the center of her. That racing pulse whispering how fragile she is, how delicate—careful, must be so careful, until she melts with sweetness, like honey on my tongue. He suddenly stopped altogether, and I wondered if he’d noticed that his thoughts were leaking all over the place. No, he couldn’t stop now! The heat of his breath over me was enough to rip a groan from my throat. Pleasure and frustration combined to drive me crazy, and he wasn’t even doing anything.
Louis-Cesare caught my eyes with his. “I want to part you and open you and go deep.” The words whispered their way across my skin as if they had a life of their own. I shivered from his voice alone, and his hands tightened on my thighs. He paused to wet his lips. “I want you to come with my tongue inside you.”
We stared at each other for a heartbeat. Whatever he saw on my face must
have reassured him, because he made a sound, deep in his throat, then that shining head moved down again. One hand curved around my hip, lifting me up so he could taste me better. Tongue pressing just so, slipping into the hot slickness of her, drinking deep, hearing her cry out. Her back arching, hips bucking, pressing up against me in a quickening rhythm, her scent maddening me, her taste exploding on my tongue. My blood singing in my ears, racing through my veins faster and faster. Her body is so sweet—
I started feeling shaky. This was exactly what I’d wanted, just what I’d needed, except that I hadn’t dreamed it would feel like this. Too much—it was like looking into somebody’s unedited thoughts and it was just too damn much. Every sense was heightened, leaving me able to feel the tiny ridges on Louis-Cesare’s fingertips as they caressed me, hear the whisper of his hair over my skin, taste the soap on his body.
Dragging my tongue over her, plunging it into her. I can sense the pace she wants; I know the touch she craves. So beautiful, head flung back, body spasming under mine, sweat sheening her thighs, she is slick under my hands, moaning, straining, tousled hair dripping, hands clutching the headboard desperately. Beautiful, so beautiful.
I gasped, fists clenching with the unexpected strength of the sensations flying between us, no longer quite sure where my pleasure ended and Louis-Cesare’s began. Every touch of his hands was a double sensation—I felt it on his skin, in his emotions, as well as in my own. Double vision didn’t come close to describing it—it was double everything. And it was too intense, far too intense. God—I could drown in this, echo after echo, never stopping, until my heart gave out and I literally died of pleasure. But I also couldn’t stop, couldn’t ask him to stop—the very idea was insane. No one could pull back from pleasure like this.
As its full force struck, I went wild thrashing and crying and coming harder than I could remember. I collapsed like a first-timer, boneless, my heart thundering in my ears. For a moment I thought I blacked out, but I could still feel my heart beating wildly in my chest. Then I opened my eyes, which felt a little odd, as I couldn’t remember closing them. Louis-Cesare’s face was flushed and wet, his hair stuck to his face in strands and the gray blue eyes glittered. His hand moved to languidly stroke my stomach, while the tip of that talented tongue ran along his full lower lip, as if licking up the remnants of some decadent dessert. It was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen.
I finally found my voice, although it wasn’t completely steady. “What… what was that?”
“Fey wine,” he said after a moment, his voice hoarse. “It has… lingering effects.”
I stared at him, speechless. That had been the remains of a diluted drought imbibed twelve hours ago? No wonder the stuff was regulated! In its pure form, it could drive a person mad.
Even if I hadn’t had the memory of his emotions, it would have been obvious that he’d enjoyed his work. My hand ran over him, and I almost came off the bed from the echo of that simple touch. Under that soft cotton he was hard as a rock. I would have thought I was incapable of feeling anything more, maybe for days, but I resonated with his need as if it were my own.
“You could use some attention.”
“Cela m’est égal,” he murmured, removing my hand and placing a light kiss on it. I frowned. He didn’t mind? Who did he think he was kidding? I wasn’t accustomed to leaving partners unsatisfied, and at the moment I was feeling extremely generous.
I used my free hand to trace the lean line of a thigh muscle with a fingertip, stopping just short of the hem of the towel, and his whole body quivered in response. That was more like it. Louis-Cesare covered both my hands with his own, raising them back over my head as his lips met mine in a long, sweet kiss. “If you wish to please me,” he murmured when we parted, his eyes amused for some reason, “obey me in this.”
I was about to ask what he meant when I tried to move my hands. And found that I couldn’t. “I will send for a healer,” he said, getting up.
It took me a few seconds to process the fact that he had actually tied me to the bed. “These won’t hold,” I told him furiously, tugging on the sheets he’d used for rope. The high thread count didn’t tear easily, though, and despite the fact that the headboard was already cracked, it didn’t seem to be giving, either. I finally realized that Louis-Cesare had wrapped the sheets around the sturdier frame, and it was metal. “Son of a bitch! Let me go this instant—I mean it!”
“Do not thrash about, Dorina, you will only injure yourself further. I will release you when the doctor arrives.”
I lay back, preparing to squelch the panic I should be experiencing at being confined. It hadn’t risen yet, but I had no doubts that it was only a matter of time. “There won’t be anything of this bedroom left by the time she gets here!” I warned him.
“Under normal circumstances, perhaps not. But your strength is considerably under par at the moment.”
“When I’m sane maybe,” I said, wrenching on the sheets. All that did was to tighten them further. “But this is sure to bring on a fit. And you’ve seen how much fun those can be.”
“Your control is not so poor, surely,” he said with a frown. “Mircea did not mention—”
I glared up at him. “Claire has been missing for more than a month.”
“What does that have to do—”
“She exerts a dampening effect on my fits. Without her, my control is slipping. Fast. Now let me up!”
He paused, but his eyes held what looked like genuine compassion, the earlier humor dissipating in the face of my distress. After a moment, he reached for the restraints. “I did not realize that the woman was so important—,” he began; then both of us swiveled toward the door. I’d been so distracted that I hadn’t heard it open, but the cooler wash of air from the hall had gotten my attention.
“I hate to interrupt,” Radu said, “but I was wondering if either of you did anything to cause the wards to fail just now?”
Chapter Nineteen
“My lord… I can explain—,” Louis-Cesare began, looking less than certain that he could do anything of the kind.
Radu held up a hand. “I am sure there is a perfectly good reason why my niece is naked and tied to her bed. I am also equally certain that I do not wish to hear it.”
Louis-Cesare’s hands fumbled a little, but they managed to get my wrists loose. I snatched up my jeans. “What’s wrong with the wards?”
“They went down a few—” Radu stopped as the windows abruptly darkened, almost like night had decided on an encore. “Well, that’s not right,” he said crossly.
I got to the windows a half second before Louis-Cesare. The view wasn’t encouraging. The sky boiled with greenish black clouds, laced through with silver streaks. The air pressure built in palpable waves, like a snake drawing its coils in closer and closer. A flash hit a decorative planting of three palms near the driveway, splitting one in half. The reverberation rocked the floor, sending vibrations up through my feet straight into my skull.
“This isn’t the right time of year for storms,” Radu was saying behind me. I didn’t answer, being too busy watching shadows shift in the vineyards beyond the house. Dark shapes unfurled leathery wings like tattered cloth in a breeze. Cold little pinpricks started running up and down my spine.
“’Du—when you say the wards fell, which ones exactly did you mean?” The shapes converged on the house, sweeping toward the window with the heavy wingbeat of large black birds. Below, I could hear something scrabbling with swordlike claws for purchase on the stucco.
“Why, all of them.” He moved closer to see what had caught my attention. “They’re on a common power source. I—”
A birdlike head on a serpentine neck smashed into the window, the glass distorting its face into a grinning rictus. Radu stumbled back with a small cry. The head disappeared and a talon-ended claw smashed through the window, reaching past me to grab at him. I beat at the thing with a bedside lamp, but it bounced off the leathery appendage without even leav
ing a dent, sending a throbbing pain up my arm to my shoulder.
Louis-Cesare grabbed the thing’s leg and jerked it inward. Its wings stuck in the space between the window and the small cast-iron balcony beyond, keeping it from advancing. It also blocked its buddies from getting inside—at least for the moment. I got a good look into its greenish yellow eyes, but only animal intelligence looked back. I wondered where the smart one was.
Louis-Cesare had spun Radu out of reach. “You must raise the wards—quickly!”
“That will trap us in here with them!” The thing in the window began to scream and vibrate. A look out of the small side windows explained its problem—its buddies had started to rip into it with the viciousness of a pack of wild dogs, rending the great wings as easily as black cobwebs.
“Better that than allowing them to escape into the surrounding population! They are only dumb animals—we will corral or destroy them.”
Radu shook his head, and the flash of fear over his face told me that I wasn’t the only one to have noticed something odd about a few of those experiments. I found the peasant tunic half-hidden under the bed and pulled it on. “Is there something you want to tell us, ’Du?”
He swallowed. “I can’t. The Senate—” The thing fell out of the window, screaming, released by its buddies ripping off a wing. It was immediately replaced by several others, their claws scrabbling for purchase on the delicate balcony railing, their teeth snapping as their great wings pummeled the air.
“The Senate isn’t here!” I reminded him. “It’s our butts on the line! Come on, ’Du—give.”
Louis-Cesare beat the things back with an armchair, which he stuffed in the hole left by the shattered window. I looked at it dubiously, doubting that wood and leather would hold them for long. I’d barely had the thought when the makeshift plug exploded through the room, wedging in the open door to the hall, blocking our retreat. One of the smaller creatures managed to scramble inside the room, only to have Louis-Cesare grab it around the throat and squeeze hard enough to cause its eyes to bulge.