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Turn the page for a preview of A Kiss of Betrayal: Élisabet’s Story.
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A Kiss of Betrayal: Élisabet’s Story
(Book Three of The Kiss Series)
By: Michelle C. Hillstrom
Prologue
Tennessee, December 2010
I didn’t know how much time had passed after I had blacked out and then awoke on the floor, trying to put the pieces together. I remembered waking from my long sleep and discussing various aspects of vampirism with Wesley while I drank the blood bags he supplied me with. Then Wesley had tried to take the blood away from me… And I attacked him! The memory flooded back and filled me with both fear and remorse. I swept my eyes about the room frantically searching for him. He was sprawled out on the floor across the room from me.
“Oh my God I killed Wesley! Wesley did I kill you? Are you alive or… undead?” I rushed over and knelt beside him – shaking his body, unsure of the proper first aid for a vampire.
I heard a groan and he rolled over onto his back. “Yes I am still undead, Katelee -- my vicious one.”
“I am so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I don’t remember anything. I just saw you laying here on the ground just now.”
“It’s the hunger -- the thirst for blood. It controls you, especially when you are newly dead. We have to build up your tolerance and control.”
“Does that mean I get more blood?” I asked, poorly attempting to mask my eagerness. What is with this junkie addiction I am experiencing? This craving for blood is worse than any cigarette craving I ever had. It’s worse than hunger; worse than my need for caffeine.
He stood and put his arm around me. We walked over to the bed I had occupied during my long transformation. “No. Quite the opposite. You have had more than enough for now. We need to kill some time to let some of that blood get out of your system. I need to help you learn how to distract yourself from the need.”
“Hmm… distraction, eh?” I had just sat on the bed but rose to my knees and crawled over to where he stood. A distraction sounds like a delightfully, delicious idea, I thought as a sudden and unfamiliar sexual hunger came over me.
He put his hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me away. “Not that kind of distraction,” his voice was stern, but then it softened as he almost whispered, “even if that idea is extremely enticing.” I noticed that his eyes looked hungrily at my lips even as he refused my advances.
I pouted at the rejection, “No fun. Why not that kind of distraction?”
Wesley sighed, ran his hand through his hair, and took a few steps away from me, appearing to search for the right words to explain. “Hunger, blood lust, physical lust, they all can become an addiction. They all are primal desires and urges that are delicately interwoven within our DNA and cannot be over fed. When you succumb to one you awaken them all. And as a vampire all of those urges are ferociously strong.”
I nodded as I listened and let the words sink in. I sat back down as some resemblance of my normal - and somewhat logical - self resurfaced. Wesley put a healthy distance between us and paced back and forth, as he was prone to do when contemplating.
“So how do we distract me in the meantime?” I asked. Wesley stopped his pacing and shrugged, suddenly looking unsure.
An idea came to me. “Will you tell me about Élisabet? Her real story. Now that I know what she is, what all of you are, what I am. Now that she is gone, it won’t be a betrayal for me to know. She is your creator, which makes her a part of you and consequently she is a part of me. I want to understand her. And since you said the creator control is waning, you should be able to see all of her past clearly now, right?”
Wesley nodded and took a big long exhale as he tossed the idea about in his mind. Talking about exes usually isn’t great for relationships, but this was an extenuating and unusual circumstance. “I suppose it would be good for you to know about your lineage. You would come to know all this in time anyway as you age and our connection begins to develop. We pass memories down through our venom so you will soon come to know more than you could ever wish to know about me and Élisabet, and her creator as well. Anything that I know you will know. That is the way it is between creators and our progeny. As long as a creator does not put up a block between them, like Élisabet did with me, the progeny will know everything that the creator knows: past lives, past creators, all about the life of vampires, and the best ways to survive… Though it does take time to learn and sort through all of the information.
“Since we need a distraction I might as well go ahead and tell you now. I think her story will help you better understand what your undead life will be like. We will consider this one of your first lessons in vampirism. I must warn you that her story is a dark one. It is no happy, fairytale, bedtime story. She had a hard beginning compared to what your new life will be like with me as your creator.”
Wesley motioned for me to scoot over; he then lay down in the bed and cradled me in his arms. “Once upon a time,” he started. I punched him gently in the ribs eliciting a laugh. “Okay, seriously, it all started in France in 1409…”
Chapter One
Palais du Louvre, Paris, France 1409
The sounds of swishing skirts accented each step the five women took. Madame Royale Élisabet Babineaux of the House of Valois fille de France paced the length of her boudoir with her four ladies shadowing behind her in a duckling trail. “You must give me space, ladies!” the princess pleaded while wringing her hands. “You are only adding to my apprehension!”
Lady Magdalena, the princess’s head lady, pulled Élisabet to sit in her favorite chair, handed her the embroidery piece she had been working on and opened a book. “Shall we read from the Book of Hours, your highness?” Magdalena suggested. “I’m sure it will bring you comfort.” Without waiting for a response from her Madame Royale, Lady Magdalena began reading from the prayer book in a vain attempt to take her mistress’s mind off the coming night. Lady Kemma, Élisabet’s second lady-in-waiting, sat at the princess’s dressing table trying on different jewels from Élisabet’s personal collection as she frequently did during down time.
Lady Kemma sighed longingly at her reflection as she compared herself to the Princess. The Princess had long, vibrant red hair, a pale, creamy, and smooth complexion; as well as effervescent green eyes. Unlike many women of the time, Élisabet had nice clean, white teeth with a rose bud pout. Lady Kemma smiled at herself in the mirror and quickly closed her lips as she viewed the black rotting teeth that resided within her own mouth. The only thing that Élisabet lacked in appearance was her body. She did not have the large thick body that society deemed as beautiful. She had a strange hourglass figure with a round bosom, small waist, and her skirts rounded out at her hips. Despite large women being the standard for beauty, Lady Kemma knew for a fact that men found the Princess irresistibly desirable.
Lady Kemma had witnessed the affect that the Princess had on the noble men who came to do business with the Princess’s father, King Charles VI. The King often instructed the Madame Royale to do whatever it took to persuade the men to cooperate with the King’s wishes. It was for this purpose that the King had not already wed
the twenty-year-old Élisabet off to any of her many suitors. If the princess were to wed, the King would only be able to use her power of persuasion upon her husband. However as long as she remained unwed and under his roof, he was able to use her whenever he wanted, to whatever extent he wanted, and upon whomever he wanted.
A knock came upon the princess’s apartment door and Lady Magdalena paused in the reading as she went to answer. It was merely a kitchen maid announcing that the dinner feast was nearly prepared and the Madame Royale should begin dressing for the banquet; her father was already asking for her. Élisabet sighed wearily as she took her position in front of her wardrobe. Lady Kemma caught the woeful exhale as she approached her mistress to begin her undressing. “Has your father given you another assignment, your highness?” Lady Kemma asked even though the princess’s behavior already betrayed the answer.
“Yes, Lady Kemma. Tonight will be yet another night of flaunting and debasing myself in front of a strange man for father’s diplomatic desires. When he called for me this morning he informed me that King Juan sin Miedo of Castile will be our honored guest at the banquet tonight. It is he that father expects me to entertain. There is a fierce power struggle developing between my uncle, the Duke of Orléans, and King Juan. Father has instructed me to make King Juan more compliant to the peace treaty that father is propositioning.”
Élisabet knew nothing of King Juan, other than his title meant ‘the Fearless.’ She did not know if he was young or old, or fat, or bald. She assumed that he was old, fat, and bald, since those were the most common characteristics shared amongst the men her father usually had her work her wiles upon. Élisabet hated doing it, but it was for her country. As a Fille de France, she had to do whatever her King and her country required of her – a lesson Élisabet had learned the hard way a few years prior.
One night, Élisabet had refused to perform the perverse things that one of the nobles had asked her to do in exchange for his military support. Both that man and her father had beaten her for her stubbornness. First, the man, who ended up enacting his desires upon her anyway, and then later, her father beat her when he discovered that she had refused the man. Her refusal that had cost France the much-needed reinforcements.
King Charles VI had once been a loving and kind father to Élisabet. His subjects had even called him King Charles the Beloved, but around the time that Élisabet had turned ten years old, something had changed. He began to lose his temper quickly, and he would violently lash out at those around him without warning. There were times that he did not know who he was, or that he was the king of France, and he would often forget that he was married and would deny that Élisabet and her siblings were his children.
Some of the worst moments of Élisabet’s younger life were during the year that King Charles refused to bathe or change his clothes. He began to smell so bad that being near him was torture. The clothes began to stick to him and the fabric rubbed his skin raw, creating festering sores that left him looking like images from her childhood nightmares. Add all of that to the fact that he began to tell people that he was made of glass, and it was no surprise to anyone when they began to hear whispers of Charles the Mad instead of awed adorations of King Charles the Beloved from their subjects and visiting dignitaries.
Élisabet placed those thoughts aside as her ladies helped her dress for the banquet. In an attempt to comfort and sooth the princess, Lady Kemma and Lady Magdalena offered reassuring and hopeful words. “Perhaps King Juan will be a kind man… Perhaps he will be content with mere conversation and dancing… You are such an elegant conversationalist I imagine if you try, you will easily be able to convince him to sign the treaty without having to take him to your bed… Maybe he will get too soused with drink to perform,” the ladies suggested half-heartedly as they removed the dress that the princess had been wearing and then assisted her into a gown of midnight blue and gold fabric.
The new gown had puffy sleeves at the shoulders, which then thinned tightly along the forearms. The midnight blue material separated in the middle of the skirt to reveal the gold honeycomb pattern and braided gold and blue fabric trimmed the square and very low cut bodice. Once laced into the gown, Princess Élisabet’s breasts were pushed up and in, creating a very ample and enticing display for King Juan sin Miedo to gaze upon – only one of the many tricks Élisabet learned for capitalizing upon her personal assets for political persuasion.
Before long, the minstrels could be overheard plucking and tooting away on their instruments. Élisabet urged her ladies to hurry their preparations. Her father would not be pleased if she was not sitting there beside him before the feast began. Rose water was splashed about her, and then her long red hair was twisted and done up with a crespine. A small thin gold crown wrapped about her forehead displaying a single diamond dipping low on her brow. After the Madame Royale was presentable, Magdalena and Kemma quickly attended to their own affairs and dressed in their finest dinner attire before they all walked down the stairs together to the expansive banquet hall below. The music the minstrels played sounded mournful and foreboding. Élisabet could not help but feel that she was walking to her doom.
A fanfare of trumpets announced their arrival and the banquet’s attendees rose from their chairs to bow as their Madame Royale walked past them to the raised table at the front of the hall where her father sat centered and lording over all their subjects below. Élisabet placed a small kiss upon her father’s pasty cheek. She was thankful that he seemed to have bathed since she saw him that morning, and his long grey hair had been brushed into pretty curls. Élisabet took her seat to the left of her father. Élisabet’s mother, Queen Isabeau, already sat to her father’s right and her other siblings sat on either side of them as well, but there was no sign of this King Juan sin Miedo.
Where is he? Élisabet thought. She was ready to get this evening done and over with. The sooner she pleased the man and convinced him to agree to her father’s treaty, the sooner it would be finished and the sooner she could forget that her body had once again been defiled in order to aid her father in his political gains. Élisabet was not sure why tonight felt different from all the nights past. She had long since learned how to separate herself from the physical aspects of her persuasion. She knew how to enjoy and ensure that the men enjoyed the experience all while keeping her emotions separate from the whole affair, but tonight it was getting to her. Tonight she longed for a different life.
The minstrels played their songs and the entirety of the gathered crowd sat about looking at the food displayed upon the tables before them. All attendees of the feast anxiously awaited the guest of honor, pondering his tardiness, and salivating with hunger. The minutes seemed to pass at a tediously slow pace as the murmurs began to rise up questioning King Juan’s absence and impudence for making King Charles wait. Élisabet sat fidgeting as the anxious murmuring sent her further into panic. Her evening would be even more unpleasant if her father were to be put into a foul mood, which she was sure he would be quickly entering into that dangerous territory as he sat there waiting. Finally, the large wooden doors opened with another fanfare announcing a late arrival. A collectively relieved sigh could be heard to echo throughout the crowd as King Charles arose from his seat and each guest copied his action.
“Please, welcome our honored guest to the feast, King Juan sin Miedo of Castile!” Élisabet’s breath hitched in her throat as she observed the Spanish king. She had not been expecting this kind of man. The subjects below gave small bows and curtseys as the foreign king strode by them and approached the royal table. His stride was strong, youthful, and confident. Everything about him shouted that he was a powerful and assertive man. The two Kings greeted each other in a friendly enough manner when King Juan reached the table. King Charles then introduced his family. First, the Queen, followed by Élisabet’s brothers, and then it was Élisabet’s turn to meet her evening’s obligation.
She had further been assessing King Juan during the introductions and his attract
ive appearance left her dumbfounded. He was much younger than she ever would have anticipated prior to his arrival, probably only a few years her senior. His sable hair parted in the center and the waves fell down to his broad shoulders. He wore a red houppelande trimmed in dark fur belted tight across his trim waist, red tights and yellow undershirt. A wide brimmed hat, which he removed with each introduction, topped off the ensemble. Underneath that fine attire, his body appeared to be athletic, like that of a warrior. Élisabet inspected him closer, still. He had brown broody eyes, a noble nose, and strong jaw. His lips looked stern, but soft. No doubt, they would be pliable and sensual when the moment came. Never had she been in danger of losing her wits nor her heart to one of her father’s dignitaries; this man threatened that record.
His presence, so near to her, left her in a state of hyper-awareness. All of her senses were clamoring to report their first impressions when they could not possibly have anything to report. Touch insisted his greeting had been a slow sensual slide of fingers across her body. Scent promised his essence was erotically stimulating. Hearing was convinced he had whispered carnal promises along with his hello. All while taste stated emphatically that his kisses would reveal the flavors of hot male and a full, rich red wine.
Élisabet forced herself to drop her gaze as she curtsied hello. This man thoroughly intrigued her. She wondered if his name ‘The Fearless’ had been well earned and that idea pleased her. All things sexual, sinister, and severely alpha male came together to build this man. She believed this would easily be her most favorite of all tasks that her father had ever commanded of her, and she knew she would be willing to complete this task over and over again. Clearly her previous hesitations had left her mind. This man would be her reward for all of the previous men she had to endure.
The Possessive Kiss: Victoria's Story: Book Two of The Kiss Series Page 17