“That’s not how you feel toward me, however,” he pointed out, damn his delectable hide. “You desire me. I can feel the strength of that desire, one that is more than matched by my own for you. What is wrong with allowing those desires to merge?”
I was still on my back, a little fire warming one side (the castle was, I had discovered, slightly chilly even in the summer, probably due to all that thick stone). Above me was an even warmer man, one who I could feel meant every word he said—he found me very desirable, and was prone to thinking some of the most erotic thoughts I’d ever entertained. I was in a century that was not my own, and might in a few hours be back where I belonged, leaving any physical relationship in which I might wish to indulge myself wholly uncomplicated or fraught with emotional entanglements.
In short, I could have my cake and eat it, too.
“I can’t, because I’m afraid that once might not be enough,” I admitted, hesitant to bare the truth.
“Who says it has to just be once?” He trailed a fingertip down the exposed flesh of my collarbone, making me arch up to his hand.
“I can’t stay here, Nikola. Who knows what horrible repercussions I’m already having on the future? To stay longer is to risk all sorts of trouble.”
He leaned over me, his hands on either side of my head. His eyes, that handy-dandy barometer to his emotions, were the color of the summer sky. “And if I asked you to remain with me? Would you stay? Would you give up your own time for mine?”
Luckily for my peace of mind, I wasn’t forced to answer that question—not that I had the slightest idea what I’d say, because to be wholly honest, just having him so close to me made common sense seem like the most ridiculous attribute ever—but because at that moment, the door was flung open and an agitated Imogen burst into the room, scattering words behind her.
“—and I don’t know what they’re doing here when they never come here before December, and it’s all going to be just like Io said, and I’m afraid of lizards and don’t want them ruling the earth, but only Io knows when and where, so really, it’s up to—oh!”
Imogen looked from her half-naked father leaning over me, to where I lay prone on the ground, my hands somehow having found their way onto his arms, where they might have been stroking his biceps in a wholly shameless manner.
“Imogen. Hi. Um…this isn’t what it looks like,” I stammered, snatching my hands back from Nikola’s silky flesh.
“It looks to me like Papa is seducing you,” she said with a frown at her father.
“That is exactly what was happening. If you leave us now, I will continue, although your interruption has no doubt broken the mood, which means I will have to begin all over again with Io, and it is no easy task to seduce her when she is in one of her resistant moods.”
I gawked at him. “You say that like all I do is resist you!”
“You do.”
“May I remind you that I was the one who seduced you first? I jumped you three times before you got around to reciprocating.”
He grinned (which melted my innards) and kissed me on the tip of my nose. “Annoyed, sweetling?”
“Not in the least. I told you that I wasn’t interested—” It took until that moment for Imogen’s words to register in my smut-riddled brain. I shoved Nikola back and sat up, looking over to her. “Did you say lizards? You don’t mean…”
She nodded, her gaze unreadable as she watched her father, with an exaggerated sigh, pull on his shirt and fancy embroidered waistcoat. “My uncles are here.”
“Now?” I shook my head. “They shouldn’t be here for two more years. Er…that is, I’m sure it’s nothing, Imogen.”
“Arnulf and Rolf are here now?” Nikola did not look happy as he pulled on his boots. I got to my feet and hiked up the neckline of my dress. It had a tendency to expose more boob than I was comfortable seeing displayed. “They should not be here for months.”
Imogen sent me a look fraught with anguish.
“No,” I told her. “It’s got to be just a coincidence.”
“One that could have dire repercussions,” she argued.
“I sense that you are excluding me from this conversation, and I do not enjoy the sensation. You will both cease it immediately, and tell me of what coincidence and what repercussions you are speaking, not to mention how lizards are involved, or what it is that only Io knows.”
Imogen watched me for a few seconds as I wadded up a handful of the gown I was wearing, not sure how to begin to broach the subject of Nikola’s demise. I wasn’t even convinced I needed to at that point, since his half brothers’ arrival could be nothing more than a coincidence.
Could it?
14 July 1703
Nikola disliked mysteries. He disliked mysterious women who ran into his horses, he disliked people having conversations around him that were deliberately intended to not be understandable to him, and most of all, he disliked the feeling that something was going on to which he was not privy.
That, along with sexual frustration, general hunger, and a desperate need for Io to admit that she wanted him as much as he wanted her, all contributed to a surliness that was evident in his greeting to his half brothers.
“What the devil are you doing here?” he demanded as he stomped into the sitting room where two men of middling years lounged with more ease than grace.
“Ever the charmer, eh, Nikola?” Rolf said with a sneer on his thick, oily lips.
Nikola considered his sibling with distaste. Both men were in their early sixties now, and time had not sat well on their countenances. Balding, with a fringe of brown and white hair, Rolf tried to disguise his enormous belly by means of stays that creaked and groaned when he walked. Arnulf was as thin as his brother was round, his body full of angles and sharp points that hurt just to look at.
Although Nikola had tried to love his half brothers as he should, he had never been close to them. Far from it, the two had always mocked him, made fun of his scientific interests, dropping sly innuendos about a range of subjects, and generally conducting themselves in a manner unpleasant to the point where he resented them intruding upon his well-ordered life. “What is it you want?”
Rolf, the elder of his two brothers, smiled, showing blackened broken teeth. “Do we have to want something to visit our dear brother?”
“You usually do, yes. If it’s an increase on your allowance that you’re after—”
“We shouldn’t have an allowance,” Arnulf said, stepping over his brother’s sprawled legs to stand in front of Nikola. “We’re your brothers, for the lord’s sake. Our mother’s estate should have been handed over to us as was right and proper!”
“If she had wanted you to have it, she wouldn’t have given it to me to hold in trust,” Nikola said, wearily wondering how long he could bear the company of his brothers, and whether it wouldn’t save them all grief if he just had them removed from the house now.
“That’s because you convinced her we were unworthy!” Arnulf snapped, and clearly would have continued the timeworn argument had not Rolf interrupted.
“We have not come for an increase on the allowance, brother,” he said with another of his oily smiles. With a grunt, he hoisted himself to his feet. “We are here to discuss a matter of the gravest importance, one which, once we determined its veracity, we knew would require your immediate attention.”
“What sort of a matter?” Nikola asked, despite his intention to get rid of his brothers. Damn his curiosity—he had never been able to quell it as he would like.
“A highly personal one. It seems, brother dear, that someone close to you, someone very close to you, desires to see you—”
The door behind him opened as Io and Imogen entered the room, the latter arguing quite forcibly with the former.
“—don’t tell him, then I will be forced to. It’s just too dangerous for him not to know.”
His eyes narrowed on Io. What is too dangerous for me not to know?
Io looked startled
for a few seconds, before glancing over to his brothers. Er… I think we may need to have a talk.
One involving lovemaking? I approve of this plan.
Er…
“I have no time to hear whatever it is that you believe is so important,” he told his brothers, grabbing Io’s arm and pulling her toward the door. “Iolanthe wishes to feed me, and as you know, I hold true to the precept that one should never discommode a lady.”
“Papa!” Imogen said as they left the room.
“Don’t look so shocked, sweetling—your uncles found out the truth about me years ago. Now, my little strudel,” he said as he closed the door behind them. “Let us go to my bedchamber so that we might have this talk you so fervently wish for.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. And stop reading my smutty thoughts. Just because my mind and body want you to do all those things you’re thinking about… Really, Nikola? Do you have a tub big enough for that?… Just because the rest of me says, ‘Oh, lordy, yes, let’s get down and boogie’ doesn’t mean that we’re going to.”
He paused at the foot of the stairs and gave her his best smoldering look.
She just thinned her lips at him and crossed her arms over those delicious mounds of breasts that he knew were created just for his satisfaction.
Right. The smolder was out. He switched it to a pathetic pleading expression. Surely she couldn’t resist that. “It shall be as you wish, of course. I do need to feed, but I will find another.”
Her jaw tightened, and her eyes narrowed until they were tiny slits. Damn. Perhaps he had been wrong trying to make her jealous.
He sighed, and said with as much pathos as he could muster, “Or I can just wait until such time as you see fit to feed me. It won’t be easy controlling myself around you when I am so hungry, but your wishes come first.”
She rolled her eyes at that, and punched him in the arm. “Oh, like I don’t see through that shallow attempt at passive-aggressive manipulation? Please, my mother was the master of it. I’ll be happy to let you…er…dine…but our discussion should probably wait until we have some time for a really long explanation.”
“What if I have a quick nibble now? One that won’t take much of your time.”
“Like any nibble you take is going to be quick? I know exactly what you’re thinking, buster, you just remember that.”
“A light repast, then.”
“No.” She punched him in the arm again.
“A sip or two. That’s all, I swear.”
She considered that for a moment, but unfortunately, his gaze drifted down from her face to her breasts, and soon his mind was filled with all the things he wanted to do to them.
She crossed her arms again. “Do you seriously think I don’t know what you’re doing, Mr. Guilt Trip? You’re not even that hungry, so don’t give me those big blue puppy dog eyes. I’ll feed you later, when we have time to talk. How come your half brothers are here? Imogen said they shouldn’t be here until Christmas.”
“They wished to impart some important message to me. They were about to do so when you burst in and distracted me with your adorable breasts, and—”
“Thighs, and all the parts in between, yes, I know,” she told him with a look that made him grin. “Nikola, I meant it when I said I don’t have sex with men until I’ve known them for some time.”
“How long, in whatever measure of time you choose, does ‘some time’ translate?”
“I’ll know when it’s happened,” she told him, turning to face Imogen when she emerged from the sitting room, his annoying brothers on her heels.
“Papa, I really must tell you—”
“Imogen,” Io interrupted, hurrying forward to take his daughter by the arm and tug her down the short hall to where the ladies’ withdrawing room was located. “I think we should continue our conversation before you say anything more.”
“I don’t think—”
“There’s something I neglected to tell you,” Io said with emphasis, and with a quick glance back at him hurried Imogen off.
Are you plotting something? he asked, mentally gnashing his teeth at the sensation of being left out of the discussion. Are you planning on asking my daughter’s permission to ravish me as I deserve? If so, please take heed when she informs you that I am lonely and need a woman in my life. She’s been nagging me for the last five years to find one.
In your dreams, bat boy.
Bat boy? What the devil did that mean? He was making a note of it in his notebook when Rolf jostled his arm, sending the tip of his pencil deep into the paper of the notebook.
“We need to speak to you about this situation,” Rolf said, shooting a glance down the hallway into which the ladies had disappeared. “Privately.”
“What situation?” Nikola put the notebook away, irritated by all number of things—his brothers’ presence, the fact that Io was being so determined to not be seduced, and this air of mystery that clung to her and Imogen, to name just a few items. The last thing he wanted to do was to spend time closeted with his two annoying brothers.
“The one we told you about,” Rolf said, struggling to hide his exasperation. “The one involving a grave threat to you.”
Mostly it was Io who claimed his thoughts. Why was she being so insistent that they not give in to their mutual desire? She acknowledged that it existed, so logically it made sense for her to allow him to seduce her.
“We must speak with you, but it is too dangerous to do so here.”
And yet, the sad truth was that things had progressed much further when she was seducing him, rather than vice versa…. Nikola froze, the whole of his attention arrested by that sudden observation.
“Aye, Rolf speaks the truth. There are some here who should not be trusted, some who are very close to your bosom,” Arnulf added.
What if he let Io seduce him again? It would solve all the problems, since it would allow her to be in control—women always liked to feel they were in control of situations, especially those regarding lovemaking—not to mention it would take care of all her notions about having to know him for some unspecified length of time before they could proceed along natural lines of engagement.
“We must speak to you somewhere away from the castle, where we can’t be overheard.” Rolf leaned in close to him. Without thinking, he shied back. “Somewhere we can tell you all that we know.”
Engagement. He frowned as that word echoed in his head. Was that the reason Io was so hesitant to engage in lovemaking? Was she saving herself for marriage?
“How about that woods where we found that stag a few winters back?” Arnulf suggested. “The one halfway between the town and here.”
No, that couldn’t be. She admitted she had lovers in the past—he spent another few seconds mentally grinding his teeth over that irksome fact—which meant her innocence was long gone.
“Aye, that would be a good spot,” Rolf agreed. “Excellent suggestion, Arnulf. Do you know the place, brother?”
Perhaps, though, she was seeking a husband. Women did that. Would she expect him to make her an offer of marriage? Personally, he had been in Io’s company enough to know that he wouldn’t mind spending the next fifty or so years with her at his side, but he had buried one wife, and didn’t know if he could go through the pain of watching another woman he cared for die.
“You know the spot we’re talking about, don’t you, Nikola? There’s a clearing in the center of it, from what I can remember. We could meet there and tell you the truth about those closest to you. What’s the name of the woods? Sauber? Sauston?”
“Zauberwald,” Nikola said without thinking, his mind busy on the conundrum that was Io. The second the word was spoken, however, his attention shifted. He ought to know the spot—it was where thirty or so years ago he had run into a demon lord, and been cursed into his present state.
“Yes, that’s the spot, Zauberwald. The so-called enchanted forest.” Arnulf smiled before adding, “Although I’ve never seen what was supposed to b
e so enchanting about it.”
Nikola frowned as he eyed the two men before him. “What about it?”
“It is the ideal place for us to have a meeting, dear brother. One that will, I’m afraid, open your eyes to the true nature of those who are around you.”
“What the devil are you talking about now?” he demanded.
Rolf laid a finger on his lips, glancing over Nikola’s shoulder to where the footman had just entered the hall. “Tonight. Shall we say midnight? In the Zauberwald, at the center. All then will be made clear.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to refuse, since he had hopes that at that time of the evening Io would be in the middle of seducing him, but there was a slight chance that she might not yet understand that he was no longer pursuing her.
“As you like,” he said, turning on his heel and heading toward his study. “I have business to attend to. You will no doubt entertain yourselves.”
“Of that, you can have no fear,” Arnulf called after him as he left the hall. There was a slight tone to his youngest brother’s voice that rubbed him the wrong way, but now, he told himself as his boot steps echoed in the side hallway that led to his study, was not the time to worry about such mundane irritations. Now was the time to focus on alerting Io to the fact that she was free to seduce him at her convenience.
How very hungry I am, he projected to Io an hour or so later, as he worked on his automaton. He allowed the red, biting sensation of the hunger to claim him for a few seconds, knowing that she would feel that, as well. I shall need to find sustenance soon.
I said I would feed you later. I’m busy with Imogen right now.
Busy with what, may I inquire?
None of your beeswax, she said curtly, and closed her mind to his before he could attempt to broach it and see just what it was she was doing in such secrecy.
His steward brought work that demanded his attention then, with concerns of the estate, following which he was obliged to visit the stables and attend to Old Ted regarding one of the mares due to foal at any moment.
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