Medley of Souls

by Renee Peters

  It made him think about the hotness of her mouth where her hands had been, and his insides tightened. But that was not what he craved — and not what she wanted, tonight.

  “Take off your gown, Joanna.”

  He said it without moving to close the distance between them. “I want to see you.”

  All of her. She could not possibly be as perfect as he imagined — as the images that had haunted his rest when the door between them had been so close and yet so far away.

  “Oui, mon Seigneur.”

  The queen held his gaze as she lifted her fingers to release the fastenings of her gown. It fell away at her neck, then at her shoulders, drooping over the edges until there was little left of her shape to prevent it falling into a pool of material at her feet. She stepped out of the circle of material toward him and he sucked in a breath.

  She was beyond perfect.

  His eyes ate up her curves. Long, flawless limbs the color of moonlight and satin, except there, where the pale, dusky rose of her nipples had risen into taut peaks on softly rounded breasts that he already knew would fit perfectly in his hands. And lower, where the silky down of her mons shadowed the nest between her thighs.

  “Matchless,” he breathed and was rewarded with a flush that darkened the color on the peaks that reached for him.

  “I find you pleasing as well, Dorian,” she whispered. “Only. You are too far away for keeping your promises.” An edge of boldness crept into her voice. “I do not wish to regret giving up my advantage.”

  A groan escaped him before he could control the evidence of his weakness, and he closed the gap between them to sweep her up into a cradling hold against the hardness of his body. He felt all the urgency that their hunger demanded — his wife was no child.

  He set her down amid the linens on his four-poster bed and stretched out beside her. Unhesitating, she turned toward him, her fingers reaching to brush over the smoothness of his chest and the flatness of his abdomen as she learned his form.

  “You are so hard,” she murmured. And her voice brought him perilously close to the edge again. “Like steel… only covered in velvet.” Her caress was a trail of fire over his arm.

  If she did not stop touching him, he would go mad.

  “I am what you make me, Cherie.” He husked. “And tonight, you make me selfish.”

  He used his weight to roll her onto her back and guided her arms gently above her head. “Stay,” he growled, and nipped the inside of her elbow sharply enough to send a ricochet of pleasure shivering through her body and across her music under his own.

  He kissed her then, tasting her skin as he made his way slowly down the length of her body, lingering to suckle at her nipples until he drew soft moans from her lips, and her fingers fell helpless, to tangle in his waves.

  “Your skin tastes like honey,” he confessed, and dipped his tongue into the bowl of her navel to take in of her essence. It made her legs tremble.

  “Dorian.” Her fingers tugged a warning on his hair that made him smile into her skin.

  He would not be rushed — not when he had been so patient, waited so long and she was unfurling like a blossom beneath him. His mouth trailed lower still, tracing a path to the fragrance of musk and heat that beckoned between her thighs. He licked and nipped lazily at her soft feminine flesh, finding the erotic bud nested there to tease it with his tongue, and lips, and teeth.

  Beneath him Joanna’s hips had begun to move, lifting to meet and match the dance of his tongue as her breath escaped on moans of pleasure and frustration.

  “Non, Dorian — Non!”

  She gasped it, and he knew the punishment of her nails raking into the bare flesh of his shoulder with enough bite to break his skin. His Condesa was greedy for more than his mouth tonight, it seemed. He could not help the wicked laugh breathed into her curls.

  “Yes, Joanna. Yes,” he teased, and flickered his tongue over the bud with enough stiffness to trigger a buck of hips and a cry of pleasure from his wife.

  It was the sword of his own undoing.

  Her scent, her taste, the sounds of her pleasure — it was all more than his man and beast could bear. In a single fluid move he positioned himself over her and parted her thighs with his knee. His arousal was a leaden weight between them at her gate.

  “Look at me, Cherie,” he demanded, and gave the darkness within permission to rise. In the shadows, the amber heat of his gaze spilled light onto the whiteness of her skin.

  “Je te vois….” she exhaled on a shuddering breath, and her fingers curled into the hardness of his behind. “And I am… yours.” Her eyes blazed peridot in answer to his summons.

  Mine.

  His darkness clung to her confession, and his sex sank into her heat on her cry of ecstasy to seal his claim. She was hot and tight around him and he could not help a groan that sank lower into a growl.

  His. Now.

  He began to move with her, guiding her body beneath him until their hips rocked together in a hypnotic rhythm punctuated by the sounds of their pleasure. Arcs of desire reverberated through their bodies and across their music like a melody, rising toward an elusive crescendo.

  Joanna began to tremble in his arms, awash with the tension that threatened to send her over the edge and he knew she was upon her release. His fangs distended, and he nosed into the curls above her ear with a primal growl as he increased the depth and pace of his thrusts.

  “You — are — mine.”

  Her cries lifted higher with each thrust, and upon the last word, he sank his fangs into the sweet honey mead of her veins.

  Joanna screamed her pleasure pain, and the rhythmic pulses of his drinking echoed the tempo of her shuddering climax as she convulsed beneath him.

  Her song poured into him in her blood, licking a firestorm awake as he initiated their pair bond. His violins lifted and swirled around her flutes, following her deeper into the recesses of her soul. The pain of her memories and suffering flickered across his consciousness, prompting a reflexive retreat of the thread, but then her pleasure felt as his own through his new connection with her, pushed him to a new height of sensation.

  He lifted his head from her throat and roared as he reached his own climax, spending himself as he sank into her on a dizzying peak of pleasure. He was almost out of his senses when he felt the warm press of her lips into his shoulder and realized in a haze that she intended on taking his blood in turn.

  He lowered over her, pressing her back into the pillows and offered her his mouth instead as the aftermath of their climax rippled through them. His apology for denying her his song was in the tenderness of his kiss, and he let her savor the taste of her own life’s blood on his tongue as he stroked it along her own.

  “You are everything I imagined you would be,” he murmured.

  “I am… happy for this,” she whispered and reached out to trail a touch over his cheek. “I do not regret giving up my leverage.” The hint of a smile curved her lips before it slipped away.

  He was still joined to her and felt languorously disinclined to be parted from her as he listened to the new and different nuances of their bonded music pass between them. It would have been deeper had he let her in to the places that he had locked away for himself — but there would be other nights, and other moments to secure their bond.

  His touch skimmed across her temple and the moisture dewing there. “Stay with me tonight,” he demanded softly. He did not think she would spend another night out of his bed while they were married.

  “Bien sur, Dorian,” Joanna murmured, and turned toward him to nest deeper into his body.

  Her arms wrapped around him in an embrace, and he settled his chin over her curls. It was only after her slender frame began to rise and fall against him in the rhythm of sleep that a slow realization dawned. There had been no amorous words passed between them during their exchange.

  He wondered why the fact left him feeling slightly hollow inside.

  Chapter 21

&
nbsp; Of all the gifts that arrived with her Immortal curse, Joanna had not thought the need to sleep so little would be one that would bite her the worst.

  It had become a ritual now. She settled in with Dorian at three in the morning, nested against him as sleep took her. Then, unconvincingly, she had to pretend that she was still sleeping from five o’clock onward.

  He humored her, at least, and even those nights they kept a sweeter company than the passions of gardening, her husband stroked a hand through her hair or let her cradle his back until his other life gave him no choice but to roll out of bed.

  The first Monday of November had meant he was up even earlier than normal for the annual fox hunt; hosted this year at the estate of the Conde de Castile. He kissed her temple and though he assured her she could sleep, Joanna was up after he was, drifting back to her suite to begin to dress.

  The Frenchwoman did so in silence, if only to listen to the softer refrains of a duet that sang between them.

  Nearly.

  There were moments their music fell out of place with one another, still harmonizing, but not quite together as a duet should be, and she felt an ache in her chest for the fact. No sooner had she realized she did, then the woman scolded herself.

  She was no maid unfamiliar with the game of love play. Her youth had been spent in the arms of those who had taught her to know pleasure. Theirs had been youthful passions built upon the comfort of companionship and trust. It had been Jakob who had finally claimed her heart as well as her body, and she had come to know the difference between make believe and truth — between passion play and love.

  Love.

  She had given herself to Dorian in the manner she had given herself to the youths who had taught her to know the pleasures of love play.

  Or she’d thought she had.

  Her fingers slipped beneath the ribbon to the place where his teeth had marked her. The wound had long healed, but she could feel the bond that had begun to be forged like a thread laced between them; as fragile as the leaves that blew in the autumn wind.

  She should have bitten him.

  The thought whispered quietly through her blood and the beast under her skin stirred in her disturbance before settling again. That was the boundary of which a make-believe marriage was made, she supposed. And standing before her mirror, she felt the silliness of a youth who was enamored after spending her first night in the bed of another.

  Yet, even in self-awareness that it was silly, it felt different. She felt different.

  She felt open-chested. As if the days and weeks she had been his Condesa had been spent with Dorian working away at her heart with keys, and suddenly she had sprung open all at once.

  Joanna’s brows jumped into a stitch and she dropped her hand to her heart as if to close it up again. She was falling. Quickly, too quickly, and on the delicate tether that bound her to Dorian Vaughn, she felt his music and the distance to the heart he kept locked away.

  “Merde,” she breathed, and ran her fingers through her hair before clapping her hands together. It was too big a day for the Conde for her to let her weakness show, and she twisted her curls into a bun with some falling loose around her shoulders.

  Her white muslin dress was simple with three-quarter sleeves. Only a satin belt with a jeweled buckle betrayed her station. But she would not be seen for a daytime event.

  As satisfied as she could be with her appearance, Joanna dabbed a touch of perfume beneath her ears and between her breasts before turning downstairs.

  Dorian sat at the head of the dining room table with an open newspaper, a steaming mug of coffee set before him and another already poured for the Condesa. She embraced him from behind and nudged a kiss against his jaw.

  “Tu es beau, mon cher,” she murmured, patting his shoulder. “The fox shall be charmed from the thrushes, no doubt.”

  Her husband grunted, catching her fingers where they landed to lift them to his lips for a nip that was soothed by the lingering warmth of a kiss.

  “It is to be hoped it will be charmed sooner than later. It will not be possible to keep the curtains drawn on the lower level,” he said, lowering her hand.

  Not with guests on the terrace and the women retreating indoors from the sun while the riders were on the chase.

  “I cannot like the idea of you being trapped above stairs all day — or the thought that the more curious of our guests might venture up uninvited.” The Conde’s music rippled with a darker strain. “Had the arrangements not been in place since last year’s hunt I would have requested it be relocated.”

  The queen rested her chin on his shoulder, touching a kiss to the sweet spot beneath his ear before she straightened to work the kinks of tension from his back.

  “I would not want to upend every moment in your life, Dorian. Nor distract you from riding. I imagine it would still hurt for an Elder to be tossed from a charging mount. William will guard the stairs and I will keep to my room and write of how unbearable the hours apart from you are.”

  It was a tease, and one that elicited a chuff of breath from the Conde. She smiled and kissed his waves. In silence, Joanna moved to take a seat alongside him to watch him over the rim of her mug.

  As if he felt her eyes upon him, the darkness of his gaze lifted from his newspaper and he turned to settle it on her own. Her husband held her attention just long enough to tease the inevitable lift of her flutes around his violins — if not a flush of color to her cheeks — and a smile ticked his lips.

  “For inspiration — since you are writing,” he murmured.

  Joanna resisted the urge to hit him with a piece of toast. Damnable man.

  They remained together in companionable silence with the music speaking more between them than words could have. Inevitably, William intruded upon their peace with a bow and a blithe announcement that the first guests had arrived.

  The Condesa watched her Conde rise and accepted the final salute of his kiss to her fingers before he turned to leave. Then she watched the lines of his back as he departed her company before she was alone again.

  Chapter 22

  Joanna remained upstairs as the hours ticked by, listening to the melody of Dorian’s music and those of the family members who had gathered beyond the manor walls. Above the chaos of voices, dogs barking, and the sound of horses, she could hear Lian, Eden, Mathias, Angelica, and another High Queen of Anowen — Shar. Not Ayla; though she wondered if the Queen had come.

  Likely so, given Ayla’s fondness for horses, but the French queen could not pull back the curtain to check.

  Despite her being well secured against the light, she could almost feel the sun trying to creep through the windows.

  It was the shrill sound of Eden’s distress that had first drawn her over to the curtain, and she stared at the shroud as if it might reveal the secrets behind it. Next was Lian, more disturbed than distressed, before they both peeled a more discordant chord. Her hand pressed against the curtain, and she turned her head to listen with an ear to the fabric.

  Dorian.

  No, his music was steady. A ripple of his concern threatened to drag her own out with him on their thread, but he was not harmed. Joanna relaxed.

  The idle conversation drifting up from downstairs grew louder into a clambering that set the woman on edge again. She went to her door, easing it open to test the gloom of the hall, only for a mass of bodies to shuffle by her.

  Samuel was in the midst of the throng, cradling Delilah in his arms.

  A scent of blood rolled free from her companion.

  Joanna felt a sudden tension in her jaws, and with a gasp, flung herself behind her door. Her veins burned with the want of a thirsty man in a desert.

  Fae blood.

  Fae blood.

  Was that Fae blood?

  “Mon dieu.” She breathed the prayer between the length of her distended fangs and cupped her hands to her mouth.

  Fae blood.

  Like nectar, like the promise of sun and life, and every
thing Joanna had lost in her curse.

  She whispered all that she could remember of the Great Litany between her fingers, willing her darkness into the depths of her blood.

  Dorian’s music was there; a lifeline in the churn of the ocean.

  Her fangs were still extended, poking bloody holes into the inside of her lips.

  Finally, Joanna felt something of herself, and ducked around the door to follow the group.

  “Qu'est qui s'est passé ?”

  The Sovereign turned a look over his shoulder, his expression grim. “What?”

  “What hap —”

  “Her horse threw her. Be mindful of your eyes and fangs, little one.”

  Despite his warning, Lian let her into the room, and she remained alongside the door to watch Delilah where she had been laid on the bed. The woman had a fog in her eyes as if an Elder had mesmerized her and a drying smear of blood at her temple.

  Joanna forced herself to look away, focusing instead on the physician who rounded the bed. Doctor Wescott, Easthaven’s doctor, was a man of middle age whose dark hair had begun to gray at the temples. Angular cheekbones and a straight, hawkish nose gave him all the appearance of a bird of prey that was not helped as he swooped over the bed to study Delilah’s prone form.

  “She fell rather hard,” Samuel murmured uneasily from his place near the headboard. “She’s been awake save a few minutes when she hit.”

  “Ah. It is precisely what should have been done, boy. I have known individuals to sleep a seeming perpetual sleep for a similar injury.” He reached out to settle a gentle touch on Delilah’s jaw and it drew a groggy moan from the woman. “I am just having a look, Miss, I’ll not take your head.” He said it cheerfully enough. “Now, let’s have your eyes, young lady.”

  Delilah stared at the doctor with the bemused expression of one who thought herself dreaming. “I shall… not give you my eyes.” She managed to sound indignant, if weary. “They are mine.”