The Vampire Who Loved Me

by Teresa Medeiros

  Julian’s eyes glittered with triumph. “I do believe our mission has been a rousing success. I predict that before the sun rises tomorrow Valentine will have heard all about our unholy little union.”

  A gust of wind suddenly ripped through the ballroom, driving a shivering heap of dead leaves before it. Portia lifted her gaze to a spot just over Julian’s shoulder, thankful that the powder caked on her cheeks would also hide the sight of every last drop of blood draining from her face. “Something tells me you might not have to wait that long.”

  As both the musicians and the dancers stumbled to an awkward halt, Julian turned to find his former mistress standing at the top of the stairs.

  Thirteen

  “Bloody hell,” Julian breathed as Valentine came sweeping down the stairs, looking like an angel with her silvery-blond hair piled high on her head and the train of her snow white gown flowing behind her.

  “Well, we wanted to find her, didn’t we?” Portia whispered weakly.

  “Not when we’re outnumbered and on her turf.” He glanced behind them, measuring the number of steps to the door. “I have to get you out of here.”

  Valentine’s regal presence parted the other dancers like an arctic ice floe. Portia had tried to forget how ravishingly beautiful the woman was, but as she came gliding toward them, her jewel-encrusted slippers barely grazing the marble floor, Portia could feel herself shrinking into a squat homely troll.

  Valentine stopped directly in front of them, her feline gaze darting between the chain and collar. “And what’s this, mon cher?” she asked, her contemptuous gaze raking over Portia. “A peace offering? Have you grown bored with the kitten’s charms already and decided to let me have her after all?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Julian replied, coiling the chain around his fist and tugging Portia into his side. “On the contrary, I’ve decided to keep her for myself.”

  Valentine pursed her lush red lips in a becoming pout. “You needn’t be so greedy. If I caught such a pretty pet, I’d share her with you.”

  He snorted. “If you caught such a pretty pet, there wouldn’t be anything left of her to share once you were through with her.”

  Valentine’s low ripple of laughter raised the gooseflesh on Portia’s nape. “You know me too well, don’t you, darling? So why did you come here tonight? To beg my forgiveness for behaving so abominably the last time we met?”

  “To be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you’d always considered yourself above all…this.” Julian’s elegant shrug somehow managed to encompass Raphael and his motley group of guests, most of whom were watching their exchange with a disturbing combination of malevolence and delight.

  She sighed. “If you must know, the nights have been very long and I’ve been very bored and lonely without you. Raphael keeps a pair of strapping young minions chained upstairs who were only too happy to alleviate my boredom for a few hours.”

  Portia couldn’t resist stealing a glance at Julian’s face, but it remained as impassive as a piece of sculpted marble.

  “If you’d like,” Valentine continued, “they can keep your kitten here occupied for the rest of the night while you and I get reacquainted.”

  Portia edged even closer to Julian, his sidelong glance reminding her to hold her tongue.

  “My ‘kitten’ has a name. Or have you forgotten it?”

  Valentine tapped her lips with one pale, slender forefinger. “Let me see…was it Penelope? Prudence? Prunella?”

  “Why don’t you try Portia?” Julian gently prodded.

  “Ah yes—Portia.” Her upper lip curled in a sneer. “Its name is Portia. And she’s a sentimental relic from your misspent youth. I do hope you’ve had your fill of the little chit by now. Judging from her pallor, you’re in danger of drinking the poor creature dry.” She reached over and gave Portia’s arm a sisterly pat. “You have my heartfelt sympathy, my dear. I’m well aware of how insatiable Julian’s appetites can be. All of his appetites.”

  As her barbed words struck a tender nerve, Portia bit her lip so hard she was afraid she was going to spoil their ruse by making it bleed.

  Julian only laughed. “You needn’t worry about her. I can assure you that she now shares those appetites. All of them.”

  It was Valentine’s turn to look horrified. “Surely you didn’t…You can’t mean that she’s…”

  “That’s right.” His smile was so cold Portia wouldn’t have been surprised to see frost forming on his lips. “She’s one of us now.” He wrapped a possessive arm around her waist, drawing her into his arms. “And all mine.”

  She wasn’t prepared for the primal thrill that coursed through her soul at hearing him claim her so boldly. For a dangerous moment, it was only too easy to pretend he was speaking from the heart.

  Valentine shook her head, plainly aghast. “Why would you do such a foolish thing? You’ve never even killed a human before, much less stolen a soul.”

  Julian reached up to draw the backs of his fingers down Portia’s cheek in a lover’s caress. “Maybe I never before found one worth stealing. One so bold and tender and irresistibly sweet. What man—or vampire—wouldn’t want to spend an eternity in her arms?” He eased aside her hair and pressed his lips to the exquisitely sensitive spot just behind her ear, sending a shudder of melting delight deep into her belly. She did not have to feign her gasp of pleasure. “Or her bed?”

  Valentine began to sputter, deserted by her oily composure. For a brief moment, Portia almost pitied her. When she finally found her voice, there was an ugly hiss to it that hadn’t been there before. “She may be tender and sweet but she’ll never please you as I did. Has she been the lover of both emperors and kings? Has she spent a year of her life in a sultan’s harem, studying a thousand different techniques for pleasuring a man?”

  “I’m the only man she’ll ever have to pleasure. And I can assure you that she’s more than equal to the task.” He gave the chain a gentle tug, turning her away from Valentine. “Come, darling. Let’s leave this place while the night is still young.”

  They were halfway to the door when a terrible shriek echoed through the ballroom. “She can’t have you! I’m the one who rescued you from the stake in Paris! You belong to me!”

  Portia stopped, turning so quickly that she whipped the end of the chain right out of Julian’s hand. Before he could make a grab for it, she had gone striding back across the ballroom, trailing the length of chain behind her. As she came to a halt in front of Valentine, several of the gawking vampires began to back away from the two of them.

  “You know, Mademoiselle Cardew,” she said. “I don’t really care how many sultans you’ve serviced or which king’s harlot you’ve been. You may know a thousand different techniques for pleasuring a man, but I can still give Julian something you never can.”

  Valentine sneered down her patrician nose at her. “And just what would that be?”

  Portia took a deep breath. “My love. You may have saved him from the stake, but it was my love that kept him alive when Duvalier tried to destroy him all those years ago. So that means he was mine first. And he’s still mine. You may very well have his soul.” She leaned closer, tossing the woman’s own words back in her livid face. “But I will always have his heart.”

  Although Portia would have thought it impossible for Valentine’s alabaster skin to go a shade whiter, it did. With a howl of rage, she wrenched a small glass bottle from her belt. Clawing the stopper free with her crimson nails, she flung its contents into Portia’s face.

  Portia cried out and clapped her hands to her face. From the horrified gasps and keening wails that arose from the vampires, she half expected her flesh to start sizzling and melting from the bone. But when she didn’t feel so much as a sting, she slowly lowered her hands, blinking the stuff from her eyes.

  She gave Valentine a disbelieving look, her relief so keen she could not hold back a startled burst of laughter. “I don’t know why they’re all making s
uch a fuss. It’s only water!”

  As Portia realized what she’d done, the phrase “dead silence” had never seemed so apt. She stole a look around her and all she could see were eyes narrowing to hostile slits and lips parting to reveal the deadly gleam of fangs. She gave Raphael a beseeching look, but her formerly amiable host’s only response was a serpentine hiss.

  Then the real outcry began.

  “He tricked us!”

  “She’s a mortal!”

  “I thought I smelled something sweet!”

  “I can’t wait to sink my teeth into that!”

  “You’ll have to wait your turn just like the rest of us!”

  The vampires closed in around her, forming a circle even Julian couldn’t penetrate. And at their head was Valentine, her green eyes glowing and her ripe ruby lips curved in a triumphant smile.

  “Portia! The water!”

  Julian’s deep voice held a commanding note that was impossible to ignore. She glanced down at her dripping hands in bewilderment. Then inspiration dawned and she shook herself like a wet dog, flinging drops of holy water everywhere.

  Valentine and the other vampires shrieked and recoiled, shielding their eyes and faces with their hands. The stench of sizzling flesh filled the air.

  That was all the distraction Julian needed. He cleared the thrashing vampires in a single leap, sweeping Portia clean off her feet and into the cradle of his arms. She shrieked and instinctively threw her arms around his neck as he flexed his knees and jumped, sending them soaring toward the gallery.

  He landed in a crouch on the balls of his feet, absorbing the shock of the impact before it could rip through her. Furious shouts rang through the ballroom below.

  Julian sprang to his feet, his frantic gaze searching for any means of escape.

  Following the direction of his gaze to the stained-glass window at the far end of the gallery, Portia’s mouth fell open. “Surely you don’t intend to…” She swiveled back around to blink at him. “You do know I can’t turn into a bat, don’t you?”

  “I’m hoping you won’t have to,” he said grimly. “Just hang on to me as if your life depended upon it. For it very well might.”

  Giving her little choice in the matter, he took off at a dead run. They went barreling toward the window, his long strides eating up the length of the gallery. Her whimper rising to a wail, Portia squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face against his throat at the precise moment he leapt and the window exploded in a moonlit rainbow of shattering glass.

  Fourteen

  Portia opened her eyes to find a heavenly choir of cherubs beaming down at her. They perched on downy white clouds in a sky of celestial blue, their chubby little fingers plucking the strings of golden lyres.

  “Oh, dear Lord,” she whispered. “I’m dead.”

  She clapped a hand to her mouth. Perhaps this wouldn’t be the wisest time to start blaspheming.

  The cherubs smirked down at her, deepening the dimples in their rosy cheeks. Her spirit might be residing on a cloud of its own in this glowing little corner of paradise, but her body was probably lying in the middle of some weed-choked courtyard at Chillingsworth Manor in a tangle of twisted and shattered limbs. At least Julian wasn’t subject to the grim finality of death, she thought with a wistful little sigh. After sending her crashing to her doom, he’d probably sprang to his feet, dusted off his coat, and headed back to London for a fresh bottle of port and another game of brag.

  Unaccountably annoyed with the cherubs’ good cheer, she jerked her gaze away from them.

  “Oh, dear Lord!” she said again, this time with an entirely different inflection.

  The vision that greeted her eyes was decidedly more pagan in nature. A most curious creature—half-man and half swan—appeared to be forcing his romantic advances on a voluptuous and nearly naked young woman. Despite the maidenly way she clasped the scraps of her ruined gown to her breasts, her parted lips and dazed expression left one with the indelicate hint that she might actually be enjoying his rapacious attentions.

  “Oh my,” Portia murmured, forced to turn her head sideways to absorb the full impact of their coupling. As heat flooded her cheeks and other less respectable parts of her body, she almost wished she hadn’t.

  The heat seemed to burn away the last wisps of fog drifting through her head. She realized in that moment that she wasn’t floating on a cloud gazing up at the heavens but lying on a feather tick blinking up at a faded mural painted on a domed ceiling by some artist who was probably long dead. The innocent cherubs were perched next to various far less innocent characters from Greek mythology, including the cunning god Zeus who had transformed himself into a swan to ravish the unsuspecting—but not entirely unwilling—Leda.

  Portia sat up in the sagging four-poster, shocked to realize she was wearing only her thin silk chemise. The drooping neckline of the garment revealed an alarming expanse of creamy bosom and shoulder. Her hand flew to her throat only to find the gold collar gone as well. It seemed she’d been liberated from both her clothing and her chains.

  Someone had also freed her hair from its combs and wiped the mask of powder from her face. Oddly enough, it was more stirring to imagine Julian’s hands tenderly mopping the powder from her cheeks than unlacing the whalebone corset of her gown.

  A branch of candles stood near the foot of the bed, their flickering glow doing little to brighten the gloom of the chamber. Although the candles were molded from fragrant beeswax instead of tallow, most of them were little more than salvaged stubs. A fall of cobwebs draped the tarnished brass of the chandelier, drifting like tattered lace before the breath of some unseen draft. The frozen pearl of the moon peeped through the mullioned window tucked beneath the eaves on the far side of the room.

  She jumped as the door swung open and Julian ducked into the bedchamber, a woolen blanket draped over his arm.

  “I suppose that answers one of my questions,” she said, tightening her grip on the neckline of the chemise. “I’m definitely not in heaven or you wouldn’t be here.”

  He swept her a mocking bow. “The Prince of Darkness at your service, my lady.”

  His wind-tossed hair and sparkling dark eyes made him appear only too well-suited to the role. The mischievous sprite who had stolen her gown also seemed to have made off with his coat, waistcoat, and boots, leaving him garbed in his white lawn shirt and ivory trousers. His cravat hung loose around the broad column of his throat.

  He tossed her the blanket with an apologetic shrug. “I would have laid a fire in the hearth but I’m afraid it’s not one of my talents.”

  Portia could well understand that. Especially when a single stray spark could incinerate him.

  As she wrapped the blanket around her shoulders, he settled himself into a gilded chair with padded arms that sat a few feet from the bed. If the gilt hadn’t been peeling and the padding spilling from the arms, it would have made a fitting throne.

  “Where are we?” she asked, nervously eyeing the shadowy corners of the room.

  “I thought it best that we lay low for a few hours and fortunately, Chillingsworth Manor isn’t the only abandoned house in this parish. Judging from the sheets draping the furniture, the occupants of this house may very well plan to return someday. I’m just hoping it won’t be tonight.”

  “How did we get in?”

  “Through a freshly broken window.” He smiled at her expression. “You needn’t look so shocked. I can assure you that burgling a deserted house is the least of my sins.”

  “Well, I certainly won’t argue with that.” Their eyes met for a long moment, but it was Portia who had to look away first. “I thought vampires couldn’t enter a house without an invitation?”

  He wiggled his eyebrows at her. “That’s only when there’s someone at home.”

  She frowned. “Why don’t I remember coming here?”

  “If you don’t recall stealing a horse from Raphael’s stables and boldly eluding our pursuers, it’s probably beca
use you were draped across my lap like a sack of potatoes. You fainted.”

  She groaned. “How embarrassing! I’ve faked any number of swoons in my life, but never succumbed to a genuine one.” She opened the blanket to peer down at her unconventional attire. “It’s very odd but I also can’t seem to recall how my gown came to be missing? Did it by any chance fall off as we were galloping across the moors?”

  “No, but it was sprinkled with holy water and I got tired of burning myself every time I touched you.” He tugged up the cuffs of his shirt to reveal blackened scorch marks along the length of his muscled forearms.

  “Oh,” Portia breathed in genuine dismay. She had to fight an absurd desire to go to him, to press her lips against his wounded flesh and try to draw out the pain.

  He lifted his shoulders in a diffident shrug. “They’ll heal. Not as quickly as a gunshot wound, of course, but in time.” He leaned back in the chair, crossing his long legs at the ankle. “So when you found your gown missing, did you fear my intentions toward you might be less than honorable?”

  Portia matched his mocking tone with one of her own. “Usually when a man sweeps a woman up into his arms and carries her off, it’s for some nefarious purpose.”

  “I was trying to save your life, not force you to elope with me to Gretna Green.”

  She tilted her head, studying him from beneath her lashes. “I thought perhaps you really had decided to set up housekeeping with me as your kitten.”

  “If I wanted a pet, I’d get a dog. Their claws aren’t nearly as sharp and their affections are more easily engaged.”

  “That was an unfair jibe, don’t you think? Especially since I spent the earliest part of our acquaintance scampering after your heels like an overeager pup.” She touched a hand to her throat. “Perhaps you should have left on the collar and chain so you would have a way to bring me to heel.”

  “Don’t think I wasn’t tempted. I briefly considered telling you I’d lost the key during our mad dash for freedom.”