The sofa, Eric thought dazedly. The sofa or he was going to stand her up against the wall and fuck her right there until she screamed. As incredible as the sex had been in the room in his mind, it was nothing compared to what he was experiencing now. He needed her naked, her skin against his. He took her shirt and began pulling it off, but then stopped partway, teasingly.
“What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.
In response, he tangled her hands in the soft cloth and held them over her head before turning her around and bending her over the high back of the sofa.
“Keeping your hands busy.” He brought them down over her chest and held them tightly against the soft mounds of her breasts, which were covered by a mere wisp of black lace. She writhed against the makeshift bonds, but didn’t protest. “So I can do this.”
He reached under her to unbutton her jeans and pull them down. A tiny black thong joined them on the floor a moment later and Eric was free to admire the rounded perfection of her bare ass before gliding his hand down her sweet cleft. She gasped as he slid through the wetness that soaked her thighs then swayed back as he began to stroke her. Eric paused and tried to calm himself. Tempting though this position was, he had to taste her first. He began to lick her softly but Caro’s heated panting told him that she craved something more. He slipped two fingers inside of her even as he lashed her with his tongue.
“Don’t stop,” she begged. Caro’s hips thrust against him desperately as she sought her release. In response, he slid in another finger and began to stroke her from deep inside, seeking that tiny spot on the inside that would send her over the edge. There. He began a featherlike caress, feeling her contract around his fingers even as she started a keening wail. “Eric, what… Oh my God.” Her voice was rough and disjointed and Eric felt as though his cock was going to shatter out of sheer pleasure, listening to her response.
Her muscles clutched at him as she came, screaming into the shirt that was still wrapped around her arms. He waited until he felt her contractions slow, then withdrew his fingers and released her from the bonds of her shirt. Caro whimpered softly as he pulled her back to cup her breasts. With a supple twist, she pulled him down for a hungry kiss. His cock strained against her as she urged him down on the floor to straddle him.
Then she glanced at him inquiringly with those gorgeous eyes and he knew what she was thinking. “We don’t need anything,” he said. “Different fertility cycles for masquerada, and we don’t get diseases.”
“Good. Then I can go straight to doing this.” She rubbed the head of his cock lightly against her soaked inner thighs. With hands resting lightly on his chest, she simply looked at him with eyes that were so glazed with desire that he felt his entire body throb. If there was anything he wanted more in his life—ever—than to have this woman ride him until he made her soar again, he couldn’t remember it.
Now. He put his hands on her hips, but she grabbed him and held them over his head. As she did, her breasts hung free over his mouth and he captured one hard, rosy nipple, sucking it deep into his mouth. She groaned, but pulled away. Before he could beg her to fuck him, please fuck him, she sheathed him with one quick thrust.
Jesus God. Eric saw stars. She was hot and tight, a perfect fit. Caro still had his arms pressed above his head and she rode him fast, pounding him deep with each motion. He tilted his hips slightly and she moaned at the increased penetration. It was too much. The pressure built and he began to move against her, increasing the sensation. “Come for me,” he whispered. “I want to see you.”
It was as though his words put her over the edge. Her eyes shut and he felt her orgasm ripple down his cock. He came seconds after her, his entire body shaking. She collapsed on his chest and when she relaxed her grip on his wrists, he immediately brought his hands down to stroke her back and the curve of her ass, causing her to murmur against his neck. Deep inside, he could feel the aftershocks of her orgasm fluttering softly against him.
She was incredible. His hands roamed over Caro’s body tenderly as he held her tightly against his chest. Then his heart thumped as his hand felt the small ridge of a scar on her upper shoulder. There was another down by her waist and he let his hand linger on it. Another scar.
Caro stirred on his chest. She must be cold, down on the floor. Eric picked her up and lifted her onto the sofa. “Let me get you a blanket.”
“Mmm.” Her eyes were closed as she drifted off. Eric had a moment of disbelief. How could she sleep after that? Then he decided to take it as a compliment. Going to the cedar chest, he plucked out a soft throw to tuck Caro in. He froze when he reached her, his stomach tingling in horror when he realized what he was seeing.
She had been attacked. He had seen the scars earlier, but his excitement and the flickering light of the fire had softened the appearance of the damage. Now, he saw that pale jagged marks slashed across her abdomen. There were two other marks on her front: one to the left of her waist and another north of her right breast, matches to the scars he had felt on her back.
The knives had gone right through her.
The marks on her body filled him with a deep and intense fury. Masquerada healed quickly but it was still incredible that she could have survived such savagery. Caro stirred in her sleep, throwing an arm over her head to reveal her magnificent breasts. He repressed a desire to wake her and demand she tell him what had happened. She would tell him when she was ready.
He sighed, willing the rage to subside. Until then, he would lie with her, warming her body and feeling the lovely weight of her in his arms.
Chapter 23
Caro woke alone on the couch with a splitting headache. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then noticed a cool breeze. She yanked the blanket over her chest.
Had that happened? Cursed, stupid, blessed alcohol.
Don’t read into it, she reminded herself. It’s fun. You’re not involved, or on a date or together. It was simple sex.
Utterly incredible, mind-blowing sex that she didn’t regret for an instant. Then she saw Eric watching her from a nearby chair.
“Here.” He passed over a glass of cool water, which she drank thirstily.
“How long have I been asleep?” More water. Her head was a little tender and she was dizzy. Great. She still had the edges of the drunk as well as the hangover.
“Not long. A little over an hour. The storm’s still raging. Dinner’s ready, if you’d like to eat?”
She eyed him suspiciously, wondering if he was playing some game. Surely he should come over and kiss her, or something, after what had happened. No, wait. It was only sex. “Good idea. I’m starving.” She groped around for her clothes until Eric tossed her a luxuriously thick bathrobe that smelled like vanilla. She put it on and joined him at the little table that had been set for two. When he pulled out her chair, he gave her a lingering kiss on the nape of her neck that pushed any doubt aside. “Delicious,” he murmured.
She melted.
The meal, salmon with crisp green beans, was delectable and Caro ate hungrily. As she cracked open a warm loaf of French bread, Eric asked about her work at JDPR, as if they were on a real date. Within minutes, they were talking about normal everyday subjects. Work. Traffic. Childhood books. Caro admitted to crying when she read that Charlotte the spider died alone, and Eric nodded. “So did I, though I didn’t read it as a child.” Then he quoted, “‘After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.’”
“A fatalistic way for a man who was born a half-millennium ago to think,” she said thoughtfully.
“Yet death comes to us all. It came to me once, when I became a masquerada. I’m not eager to relive the experience, but I also don’t dread it.”
Caro leaned back. This was new information. “I thought masquerada were born.”
“Most are. Stephan and I are two of the few we know who were not.”
She was dying to ask about it, but wondered if it would be indelicate. Then again, she was eating dinner with the masquerada Hierarch while sitting naked in a bathrobe. Might as well chalk this entire night up to one of intense strangeness and do as she wanted. Why the hell not? The worst he could do was say no, and she’d never been good at taking no for an answer.
So she asked.
He spread some bread with butter and popped it into his mouth. “Not something people usually ask.”
Caro kept still and looked at him, waiting for a better response.
The silence that had worked well to generate the information she wanted in interviews didn’t work at all on Eric. He simply kept eating while the quiet stretched until it filled the room’s every nook and cranny. It was Caro who finally gave in.
“I’d like to know.”
“You’re not going to give up until I tell you?”
“I can be tenacious.”
He rolled his eyes. “Of that, I have no doubt.” He shrugged. “I’ll tell you my story, but not Stephan’s.”
“That’s fair.” Also, it wasn’t Stephan’s transformation that interested her, at least right now.
Eric poured himself a glass of wine. “I was a coureur de bois. Do you know what that is?”
“A trader? French, back in the 1600s.” It seemed she had paid attention in history class.
“That’s it. I traded for furs up the Ottawa River. Mostly beaver, to send home to France. It was a hard life, but a good one. As soon as the ice melted, I would be alone for days, listening to my paddle on the water and the call of the loons.”
Caro leaned back in her chair as he spoke. His voice had taken on a slight, rhythmic French accent.
“I had my own route,” Eric said slowly. “My contacts. Tribes I enjoyed visiting, and who trusted me. I met Marguerite. She was Nipissing.” He caught her searching glance. “Did we fall in love? I don’t know. Many of the men took Indigenous wives, only to leave them when they wanted to wed a Frenchwoman. I’d say Marguerite didn’t allow herself to love me, and I couldn’t love alone.”
“She was a masquerada?”
"No. Just a remarkable woman.”
“Then what happened?” Caro listened with her heart in her mouth. This was fascinating.
“I became ill with smallpox. The tribes were being decimated by it.”
“You died?”
There was a long silence as Eric squinted up at the ceiling. “I think so,” he said. “I don’t know for sure. Marguerite had the shaman come. He was a masquerada, and highly respected.”
He paused, his eyes distant with memory. “Back then, to be a masquerada was to be honored, at least with the Nipissing. They were one of the few places where we openly lived together with humans, accepted. Now it’s much safer to stay in the shadows, creatures of myth and legend.” Eric sighed. “I thought he would kill me, but he hoped that transforming me would transform the evil inside of me, the disease, and I would change what was happening to his people.”
“Did it?” Caro whispered.
“It’s hard to become a masquerada, did you know that? I mean to be turned into one, when you’re not born to the blood. It’s why we tend to be stronger than most…if we survive.” Eric’s tone was academic. “It’s similar to what happens with vampires. The body is almost totally drained, then a masquerada’s blood is added. Not much. You need to recover on your own. You’re weak for a long time, and I was still ill with smallpox. Most of the ones they try to turn don’t make it.”
“What happened to Marguerite?”
“She died,” he said harshly. “They all did, even the shaman.”
Caro didn’t know what to say. She rose and walked to the other side of the table, where she laid her hand gently on his shoulder. He kissed it, then turned it over to speak with his mouth against the palm. “It was a long time ago, Caro. It’s stopped hurting.”
His hot breath vibrated against her skin. “Has it?” she asked.
“No.” He said simply. “I suppose it never will. Many people died. They died of a disease I might have brought.”
She slid her fingers through his hair and brought her lips down to his ear for a soft kiss that caused him to shudder. One quick move and she was on his lap, his lips demanding a kiss from her mouth. This was different. It was intimate. Close.
“Then you became the Hierarch?”
He laughed and buried his face into her neck. “If I need to give a full account of my life, I at least need to be comfortable.” He rose with Caro still in his arms and walked over to couch. “Now ask away.”
Caro curled against him. “Becoming the Hierarch.”
“Not much to tell. I’d already been elected to the Council and when the old Hierarch died, there was no heir apparent. The Council had a vote and I took her place.”
She blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Oh.” That was far more boringly bureaucratic than she had anticipated. Then she paused. “Was Iverson involved in this?”
“He lost the vote.” Eric shrugged. “He’s never accepted it.”
She didn’t want to think about Iverson. Not now. Onto other things. “Are you immortal?” Caro rubbed her nose. “I’m being disingenuous here. I want to know if I am. As a half.”
Eric pulled her closer. “I can’t believe how little you know about your own people. We’re not technically immortal, but we have extended lifespans, about a thousand years if you don’t succumb to le vide or injury. You’ll probably have the same.”
“Le vide?” His muscles tensed under her hand.
“Hard to describe. I suppose you’d say it’s a sense of unending ennui. It causes severe depression.”
As she lifted her head to ask another question, the room went white from a blinding flash of lightning. A tremendous crash shook the house and the lights flickered, then went off.
“Dammit.” Eric stood and covered Caro with a blanket. “Stay here by the fire while I check on things. The generators should be up soon.”
Caro curled up on the sofa, feeling relaxed despite the storm and wondered if she should have another glass of wine. She glanced idly around the room, looking for the bottle, before her gaze hit the window. The threatening gray sky of the afternoon had switched to heavy night. She could see nothing but blackness outside of the window. Night. It was night and she was away from home. What if he sent her home? What would she do?
The terror came high and fast. Caro pulled the blanket over her head, almost suffocating under the thick cashmere. Calm down. Count. Breathe.
None of it was happening. The blackness swirled around her and threatened to take her down and drown her. Without realizing what she was doing, she began to hunt around for her clothes, one hand clutched against the scars on her belly. Tears streamed down her face.
Finally, unable to deal with the fear, Caro collapsed on the floor, buried her face in her shirt, and tried to rock herself calm.
Chapter 24
Eric checked in with Tom, who assured him that all was well and their emergency generator was enough for the security systems. “I’m not using it for the lights or any non-security systems,” he said. “We don’t know how long things will be down and Iverson might take advantage of the storm.”
“Good. We’re sure it wasn’t sabotage?”
“I checked in with my contact at the city. The whole west end went out when a transformer got hit by lightning. Not even Iverson can manage that.”
He returned to the library, wondering if Caro would like to go upstairs. The thought of lying with her in the cozy dark was attractive. The library was suffused with a dim light from the dying embers of the fire, enough for him to see that the sofa was empty. Where was she?
His senses went on high alert. It was impossible that Iverson could have infiltrated the house, but whe
re was Caro? He moved to the wall and began to work his way around the room silently, eyes vigilant.
A motionless lump lay in the corner. Caro. He sprinted to her side. “Caro, what’s wrong?”
She was inarticulate and he checked her over quickly. It was still Caro, so it wasn’t that she’d been visited by an unwelcome shift. She appeared uninjured, except— He looked again. Her hands were tight on her belly, pressing against the scars so hard her arms shook with the effort.
A fierce compassion rose in him. Had she been attacked in a storm? He tried to lift her, to carry her to the comfort of the fire, but she resisted. “Don’t touch me,” she said in a rough voice.
“I won’t, Caro. I won’t move until you tell me. Talk to me. Tell me what happened.”
She turned to him with pain-filled eyes. “It’s night.”
“I know. It’s almost nine o’clock.”
“They got me at night.”
The simplicity of the words slayed him.
“Tell me,” he demanded. She blanched and he cursed himself. “Please tell me,” he added in a softer tone.
“I can’t.” She began to tremble and he reached out his hand, waiting for her to touch him. When she did, tentatively, he pulled her close. The robe was falling off and her body was cool and damp with sweat. “I’ve never told anyone.”
“I saw the scars,” he said gently. “It may help you to talk.”
He saw the struggle in her face and placed his hands on hers to tenderly pull them away from the scars. Then he put his own hand where hers had been. The scar itself was smooth but he felt the thick ridge of healed flesh below. She jumped as though it was the first time she had been deliberately touched there and Eric wouldn’t have been surprised if it was true. “Tell me,” he repeated.
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