Her nipples were small and dark and perfectly smooth and the most beautiful things Miles had ever seen. He suckled her gently, reveling in the slight noises she was making, thrilled when she brought her hands behind his head and, twining her fingers in his hair, pressed his face against her harder. Her joy at his touch sparked something old and forgotten inside of him. The ache in his body grew almost overwhelming, but he ignored it. It was not real, just an illusion.
He kept his lips on her breast but moved the hand with the feather lower, until it was resting on the inside of her right ankle. Then, kissing her, he dragged the plume up, moving it in a long slow S along the curve of her calf, dipping it to caress behind her knee, winding it up and then inching it, with excruciating slowness, along the tender inside of her thigh. He used his other hand to push the skirt and petticoats of her gown up, and his fingers accidentally brushed the supple skin of her leg.
He felt a spark pass through his body and his self control deserted him. Bringing his mouth to hers he kissed her hard, and moved the hand not holding the feather to the buckle on the wide leather belt of his costume. This was not desire, it was need, blistering and relentless in its heat. He had to feel her around him, had to bury himself in her, had to feel her touch on his body. Clio’s hands were there, too, trying to help, fumbling with the buckle. Her palm strayed over the bulge in the fabric of his short breeches and it was his turn to gasp.
“I want to touch you, my lord,” she whispered. “I want you to feel what I am feeling.”
Her fingers hesitated over the lacings of his leggings and for a moment he could imagine just how it would feel, how it would feel to have her touch him, to have her in his arms, to make love to her on the desk, on the floor, in every room of his house, how it would feel to make love to her over and over again for weeks, for years, to learn every part of her, touching her and tasting her, being entirely with her, no restraint, no control, to give himself to her entirely.
But he was not his to give. A surge of anger flared through him, white hot and repellant, and he pulled away from her, but not before her lips could brush against his cheek.
That touch, her unsure, nervous kiss, quenched his rage. Gently, he lifted her hand away from his body, and held it in his own as if he were weighing it. “Not now,” he said, huskily. He was doing this so she would know she was not evil. “Now is only for you.”
He kissed her differently then, tenderly, sweetly, and moved his lips along her neck, along her collarbone, to the smooth globes of her breasts. With his lips kissing the edge of her right nipple he tightened his hold on the feather and used it to trace the outline of the triangle of curls where her legs met.
Clio gasped and stopped his hand. “My lord, I think something is wrong. There is nothing subtle about what I am feeling.”
Miles kissed his way up from her delicious breasts and caught her eyes with his own. She was blushing gorgeously. “You are perfect,” he said, his gaze unwavering, his voice a low purr, his lips close to hers. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered, his eyes locked hypnotically into hers, and Clio was lost. Releasing his hand she let him slide the feather between her thighs and trace a tight circle over the aching place there.
Clio shed her reserves, laying her whole self at his disposal, withholding nothing. Using the tip of the plume, Miles darted over her sensitive nub, petting it with the lightest and most subtle of touches, making Clio shiver in blissful agony. When her eyes darkened and began to look almost purple and her moans grew sharper, he turned the feather sideways and let the edge run up and down her entire length, up and down between the swollen petals of her body, dragging it slowly back and forth in a long figure eight. She bit her lip then, biting back the cries inside of her, and the pressure between her legs built with every smooth, gliding stroke.
Clio felt as if she were ascending, flying higher and higher with each flick of the feather across her body, rising to dizzying peaks, swooping up and up and up. Miles pressed the plume into her, so the hard rib at its center was massaging her, then spun it, wet with her moisture, from side to side along her entire length. “Oh, my lord,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “Oh, Miles, please do not ever stop.”
It was the first time she had spoken his name. His self control deserted him. He moved his face close, placed his lips over hers, and began to stroke her with his thumb. He could not help himself. He had to touch her.
The haze Clio had been in evaporated and her body felt like it was ablaze. Miles teased her lips with his tongue and ran his thumb in a wide circle over her once, then again, pressing against her with the roughened tip of his finger harder and harder. He caressed her like that, in wide lazy circles, until she was panting and gasping and begging him for release, for death, for whatever he was planning. When she was too lost to even beg Clio felt his other fingers join his thumb, all of them at once, all five of them surrounding her and pulling gently at her and then sweeping against her in a long oval that sent waves rippling out across her body. She felt his fingers spread her wide, felt his thumb again, harder now, petting the slick tip of the most sensitive part of her, pressing it up and around and up and around. One of his fingers slid into her tight passage, just slightly, but the place he touched made the feeling become so much more intense that Clio was certain she was levitating. With his finger inside her, his thumb rubbed over her hot, wet pearl in one last circle, and she exploded. She felt a little burst inside of her, and then a larger one that echoed in every part of her and made her feel like she was careening through the air, spiraling down and down and down, in a thrilling descent that left her gasping and ordering him to stop and begging him not to. She closed her eyes and threw her head back and moaned in pleasure, and wonder, and joy.
When the echoes of her pleasure against his finger had slowed, when her eyes had lightened and the purple flecks had gone back into hiding, when her gasps and moans had become only sighs, Miles whispered, “You are spectacular, Clio Thornton.”
Clio felt like she might cry. She was happy in a way she had never been before, exquisitely happy, exquisitely satisfied. She closed her eyes and reveled in the feeling of having Miles next to her, the warmth of his hand resting possessively on the small rise of curls between her legs, the little trills of pleasure her body was still sending. Every night for ten years she had fallen asleep thinking about what it would be like to be with him, the man she had fallen in love with as a girl, the man who had captivated her heart from afar, and now she knew. It was better than anything she could have imagined.
For one moment, her life was perfect. And then her eyes opened wide and she spoke the three words that had been in her mind all night, and the moment was gone forever.
Chapter Eleven
“I love you,” were not the words.
What she said was, “Never desire. Devonshire.”
“Thanks” or “Lovely” or “Oh” or “Gazooks” or even “I am hungry” were all things Miles would have been unsurprised to hear. But not that.
“Devonshire. Never desire,” she repeated.
“Are you all right?” Miles inquired with real concern.
Clio gave him a glowing smile. “I was momentarily thrown off by the ‘h’, but now I understand,” she explained without explaining anything. “Devonshire. That is what the spinning sign said. The letters just got a bit mixed up.”
“What sign?”
“The sign in my dream. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that Devonshire has something to do with the vamp—” Clio stopped and her eyes got a faraway look in them. “Flora was from Devonshire.”
Miles slid his hand from her thigh and turned away from her. After a pause, he said, “So was Beatrice.”
Clio spoke to his back. “Maybe that is how the vampire chooses his victims.”
“Yes. Or maybe it is a coincidence.”
But Clio knew her dreams were usually more accurate than that, bringing together things she had read or seen without realizing it. “I wager that if we go
through the accounts from three years ago we will find that all the women were from Devonshire.” Miles turned around and his expression was skeptical. “Do you have a better idea?”
“I have the news sheets from three years ago in my apartment,” Miles said, not replying directly. “We can go there to study them.”
Clio waited for a moment before sliding off the table. Her knees were not functioning properly and she wobbled slightly. Miles reached out to steady her and found himself instead pulling her against his chest. She came to him desperately, fiercely, and he wrapped his arms around her tight. They stood like that, holding each other, not talking, not breathing, for a long time.
“We had better go,” Miles said finally, stepping away from her and breaking the embrace. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in his ears.
Clio nodded. They left the alcove and entered the now empty library without speaking. As they approached the door leading to the service corridor, Clio bit her lip and seemed to hesitate. She raised her eyes to his. “Thank you, my lord,” she said quietly.
Miles scowled. “For what?”
Clio gestured behind her. “For that. In there. On the table.”
Something flickered behind Miles’s eyes. “You are welcome.”
“That was—no one—I mean—well—nothing like that has ever happened to me before,” she said, fumbling. She was blushing beautifully and her eyes were slightly misty. “I felt—you felt—You made me feel extraordinary.”
DANGER DANGER DANGER!
“I see,” Miles said in a tight voice.
Hearing the strain in his tone, Clio rushed to reassure him. “Do not worry. It won’t happen again.”
For a moment he stopped walking and looked down at her, and she had the feeling that he was looking through her, inside her, looking for something.
“No,” he said finally. “It won’t.”
Something she could not give him.
They walked the rest of the way to his apartment wrapped in silence.
The figure flitted out the servant’s entrance of the west wing of Dearbourn Hall, and, looking furtively over a shoulder, made its way into the bushes. She paused to get her bearings, then rushed toward the agreed-upon meeting place, a shrubbery copse which would be almost impossible to see from the house.
He was already waiting for her when she arrived, and she threw herself into his arms. “I have been dreaming of this all night,” she whispered. “I could not wait for all those tedious people to be gone so we could be alone together.”
Her companion murmured something back, some endearment or other, enough to make her feel that he was paying attention, then asked, “Did you bring it?”
She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a key. “This was the only one I could find.” She held it out to him, playfully. “Come and get it.”
It had been easier at first, these meetings, but now he had to grit his teeth when he took her in his arms, and tonight he had a bad headache. The charade of waiting on her was getting boring, exhausting, but it would not have to go on much longer. She was just a pawn, just a playing piece to be maneuvered and sacrificed as part of master strategy for revenge. Just a little longer, he told himself. Buy yourself just a little more time. You are so close. So damn close.
So close he could taste it. He pulled her toward him roughly, wrenching the key from her hand as he kissed her hard. Her lip started to bleed and the taste of her blood excited him even more and he pulled open the bodice of her gown.
“Oh, my darling, you mustn’t,” she protested, but he knew she liked it, liked the pain, liked the fear. He pushed her down into the bushes and took her, took her not for the first time, but for the first time really enjoying it. He was so close. It was not her face he saw as he pumped himself into her, it was another face entirely, a face that grew sharper and sharper as he got closer and closer to his release, a face with brown hair and those odd-colored eyes, eyes that would bulge when they saw what he had done. He would have his revenge; he would have his triumph. All of them would pay and pay and pay, he thought, and each time he pounded into her harder and harder and harder.
Beneath him, the woman moaned as he pushed, moaned and panted as he shoved roughly into her, clawed at him as he thrust himself into her one final time, pouring his seed into her, ripping her open.
Afterward, they lay together in the bushes. “Darling. Darling, I love you,” she whispered intensely. She was clinging to him, her hands clammy with sweat.
The man known as the Vampire of London left her lying in the bushes, a trickle of blood streaking down her legs, and made his way back to his apartment. They could not dare to be seen together like this, that was how he explained his abandonment each time. The truth was, the bitch revolted him.
Minutes later the woman reentered the house. On her way to her bed she paused in the room with the peacock walls to study her face in the huge mirror over the mantelpiece. There was a becoming flush on her cheeks, but other than that, no signs of her meeting with her lover. She was certain that no one would ever know.
The room was a mess. Every drawer of the beautiful carved desk had been crudely pried open, every glass and ceramic and inlayed box smashed. The window treatments, which had been woven in Florence especially for the chamber, had been ripped down and lay in tattered puddles of silk on the floor. Upholstered chairs had been sliced open, their straw understuffing ripped out and strewn over the carpet, which was stained with yellow and reddish-brown spots. The armoire gaped open, its contents—forty dresses—splayed on the floor, loose threads showing where diamonds and rubies and pearls and emeralds had once been sewn on to them. A painting of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus that had been done by Raphael, a present Miles had given Beatrice two months earlier, had been pulled off the wall, to reveal the safe behind it. Its contents, a queen’s ransom in jewels and gold, were gone. A single emerald glinted in the back, having weeks earlier slipped out of a necklace and not yet been replaced.
Only the bed had been left untouched by the attack. Sort of. In the middle of a tangle of sheets, Beatrice was stretched, bruised, over a sea of pillows. She lay on her side, two pricks on her neck, dead. But in the vision she spoke to him.
“Do you see this, Miles?” she asked, gesturing around at the destruction of what had been the most sumptuous apartment in London. “You said you would make me happy. You said you would protect me. You promised to care for me. But you abandoned me. Like I knew you would.”
Her voice echoed through Miles’s thoughts, ricocheting from past to present, from the woman in his bed beside him now to that other woman, from Clio to Beatrice, from this empty chamber to that one and back again. He wanted a drink.
“You talk of love, but it is all lies. Liar liar liar,” her voice grew more hysterical. “Protect me. Fine job you did protecting me. Caring for me. Look at this. Look at this!” she shouted, and the voice mingled with other voices in his head, his father’s, his own. “You did this, Miles. This is your fault. All your fault.”
(No. NO. I did love you. I tried. I TRIED!!!)
“You failed, Miles.”
That was the last time a woman had shared Miles’s apartment. Sitting up in bed now he shook his head, shaking the images and voices back into obscurity. He squinted into the dark of the chamber, looking for the telltale glint of a carafe. There wasn’t one. Damn Corin. Why had the manservant believed him when he said he wouldn’t be needing any wine? The fool should have known better.
Miles raked a hand through his hair. The look in Corin’s eyes when he had given the order—easy words, “I won’t be needing a decanter tonight”—came back to him, an expression of wonder and relief. He was sure his cousins would have shared it. It pissed him off. Damn them all. He had the queen and the admiralty breathing down his neck on the one hand, and some breathtaking fool of a woman claiming to be a vampire and keeping him from his investigation on the other. He deserved a drink. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone, leave him to drink himself into o
blivion or peace or whatever he was drinking himself into. Why did any of them care if he had a couple of glasses of wine before bed? What the hell difference would it make to anyone?
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clio stir. She was probably getting ready to chastise him about his drinking, too. Having her here was a mistake. He should never have consented to share a bed with her, even if there was no other place to sleep in his chamber, even if they were both dressed, even if the mattress was huge. Although the desire he had felt for her in the library had fizzled out as they poured over the old news sheets together, her presence still made him feel… like he wanted a drink. Tomorrow he would order Corin to unpack all the furniture so he could sleep somewhere else. Anywhere else. Away from her.
Who did she think she was, barging in, disobeying him, knocking out his household staff, challenging his orders? Some woman who did not know the first thing about manners. Or how to flirt. Take her eyes, for example. Those eyes that flared purple when she had climaxed. Had other men seen them do that? God he wanted a drink. She just looked out of them, challenging, direct, instead of using them to convey a hint of mystery, a spark of desire. Instead of making a man feel like he was the most interesting creature she had ever stood near, she made him feel like she suspected him of some nefarious deed that she would soon be finding out and sending him a bill for. She had no notion of how to be seductive. Or coy. She was totally uncouth. Totally uncultivated. Totally uninteresting.
Damn his throat was dry. The key was to get her the hell out of his bed and his house and never see her again. Which meant finding the vampire and proving to her that she was not one. Why was she so damn determined to believe she was a fiend anyway?
It had happened again that night. He had hoped that the kiss had worked to show her that her hiccups were simply a sign of strong desire, not necessarily the desire to do violence, but she had gone right on willfully crediting she was a fiend. Acting on her suggestion, they had looked through the old news sheets and confirmed that all but two of the girls killed by the vampire three years earlier were from Devonshire. Not only that, it appeared likely that the remaining two were as well.
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