by Multiple
He lifted his thumb away and he sat back with his dark blue eyes potent. “You’re beautiful,” he said.
Her heart flipped a beat as her fingers touched her lips where he’d touched them. She knew the expression on her face was amazement that quickly turned into disbelief as she slightly shook her head.
“You are,” he restated firmly to her disbelieving gestures as his fingers tapped the table. “I’m afraid that I won’t be able to stop if I taste your blood.” His words were flat and matter of fact as he turned his gaze off into the distance of the room.
Beth assumed that meant her death if he took too much of her blood. She could certainly believe that, knowing how much she craved to taste his blood again, and how hard it was to stop. She lowered her fingers from her lips and she settled her fingertips over his tapping fingers … stilling their motion. Every piece of her believed he would never harm her that way. He might not realize it, but he was incapable of it.
“You should sleep,” he muttered, turning to look down at their fingers where they touched. “We have exhausted our revelations for one day.”
Chapter Twenty One
At midnight, Trinity stood on the highest eaves of the regal manor. The constant wind from the moors tugged at the loose edges of his shirt and the long strands of his hair. Moonlight from a half-moon glistened over the sprinkled blossoms of heather waving on the dark landscape below him.
He’d fed again, glutting himself, even though he didn’t need it. Just to be certain. The night felt long and it had never felt that way to him before. Yet he’d found being close to Beth again had eased the primitive urges he’d felt when apart from her.
“Since the vows,” he muttered with the wind snatching away the sound of his voice. If he believed in fate, he might think he’d found that one woman meant for him. That would be so generous of life. It was hard to accept. Yet every turn he took seemed to turn him back toward it.
He remembered thoughts he’d had shortly after meeting Beth. A wish … maybe … “No.” But how could he lie to himself? He’d thought she would be the kind of woman he could have wished to marry. “If I were human.” He growled at himself.
Yet he was married to her. Now what was he supposed to do? He turned and he walked to the top of the eave as though he were the most talented circus performer. If there was one thing he’d learned in his overly long life, it was destiny didn’t care what you thought should be happening.
Moments later, he quietly entered Beth’s room. His night vision found her like a beacon, sleeping on white sheets. Her long hair was inky blackness against the white, frilly-laced nightgown she wore, which was sliding down one shoulder, baring it, as she slept on her side. Urges and emotions tossed inside him at the sight of her. The vulnerable and seductive sight of her. He fought the calamity attacking him on all fronts. He was amazed he could even care that blood pulsed in her veins as satiated as he was. The battle tightened his resolve and his entire body into an unyielding wall.
He approached her. She was fragile and soft. The curve of her hip beneath the sheet was full and tempting. His body regretted she was so innocent of sexual couplings, because it wanted her with fierceness that felt wild and untamed. Yet his mind controlled his body and he wouldn’t see her frightened or harmed.
“Trinity?”
By god, she’d startled him. He’d been so intent looking at the top curve of her breast he was completely unaware she’d woken. Damnation, that was unusual. He looked at her eyes so dark in the lightless room. His arousal was not capable of entrancing her. Trinity pushed aside the nagging thoughts as he realized Beth wasn’t certain he was really there. She didn’t have night vision as he had. He could back away without her realizing.
Unrealistic urges opened his lips. “Hush, maiden, I just wanted to check on you,” he murmured under his breath. Guard your door, if not in here. He turned his head slightly at the protective thoughts that stabbed him.
“I knew you were there. I don’t know how,” she said sleepily. Then she said so softly he barely heard, “I dreamed of you.” He moved closer as though she lured him. “Where are you?” she asked.
“Right here,” he answered. In one movement, he could be sitting beside her.
Her gaze searched for him in the darkness. “In my dream you pierced my neck with your fangs and you took my blood. I felt so …”
Damnation. Was she out to seduce him to do it? His fangs lengthened in his mouth. Wicked temptress, he thought. Hadn’t he told her on a number of occasions how hard he held back his feral desire to feed on her? How dangerous it was. Yet, she continued to entice him.
Anger and sexual desire clashed inside him. He’d proven to himself he could keep from biting her, but not from coupling her. In a less compelling moment, he might have thought the two were far too intertwined to try. At this moment, he was provoked. Then he was on top of her, pulling her over and beneath him.
“Right.” Beth’s voice was shrill, finishing on a high note, and he realized she’d ended the sentence she’d started before. Her small fists pressed into his chest.
“You will get burned,” he warned, grasping her chin and turning her face to the side, baring her neck to his fangs. “Is this what you want?” His voice rumbled as he grazed her neck with his fangs, but not biting.
A delicate feminine yelp leapt from her throat and her body bowed against his, rising to where he held his body tautly above her. The fullness of her breasts flattened into the hardness of his chest. “Yes,” she panted, arched beneath him. “If we don’t do this you will live a tortured existence beside me, but not with me.”
He was astounded, but no less provoked, by the temptations of her supplicated throat and the mutual arousal he could feel burning between them. “How do you know this?” he demanded, his breath hot against her supplicated throat.
“So much knowledge came with the taste of your blood,” she panted.
He could feel the passion pumping through her veins and he licked her throat, opening his mouth, fangs throbbing for her purity, just as his erection pounded for it. She was splayed beneath him as his muscular body flexed and tensed.
“Kiss me,” he rasped, feeling as if he might break in half.
“Trinity,” she whispered and she used her arms clutching his shoulders to pull her lips up to his. Fire burned down his body as their lips touched. His hardening erection knew how close it was to what it demanded as he kissed Beth’s eager mouth.
She tasted of trust and unfolding passions, so tempting and ripe. He wanted to lay his body on top of her, to grasp her thighs and pull them open so he could settle between. His thoughts taunting him with the knowledge of the little wispy thing she barely had on. He could feel the tips of her nipples prod his chest at different moments as she held on to him to kiss him.
Her mouth was bolder and her small tongue tempted him, until he thrust his bigger tongue deep into her mouth. Like he wanted to thrust inside her. The tightly controlled part of him wondered how far he could go with this before his beast gained control.
A rumble purred from his throat. No, she was his and he would not go feral on her. He knew his eyes were yellow and his fangs were out. Yet he was controlling it with a sense of firmness he’d not felt before. Perhaps his little innocent was right and he was incapable of harming her. She tasted right. She tasted of fresh storms brewing. Her arms lost the strength they’d used to hold her upward to keep kissing him and she fell to the pillows with her lips panting lightly.
Her hands rubbed his sides, dragging his loose shirt in places. “You’re my husband,” she whispered.
His chest tightened. Yes. Please. He knew she was offering herself to him. “I’m not a gentleman,” he managed; his throat was tight.
Her hand found his bare skin, beneath his shirt, and stroked. A little sound of awe curled from her throat. She liked the feel of him.
“I’m not a fragile little girl.” Beth’s small hand flattened on the upper mound of his chest muscle.
“Yes, you are.”
A soft yet rough assertion as her fingers kneaded his taut muscles. Her other hand found the bare skin on the side of his waist and she rubbed it, making his erection throb. She sighed with a sound of relenting surrender to the fact he was right. She was a vulnerable little girl. Just that thought scoured his body and he nearly lowered it on top of her. He wanted to lick this little girl from head to toe.
Beth felt every side of herself in contradiction. She was innocent, yet at times she felt worldly. She was afraid, but not afraid at all. She wanted her husband, but she wasn’t certain what to do with him. Then, at some moments, she did know. She wanted him to come to her, to stop holding himself away, but she didn’t know how to make that happen. Perhaps he was right … she was a little girl and didn’t know anything.
Except, she would think all those things and know them to be right, but none of it mattered when she touched him. It was completely dark and she couldn’t see him. It was like a dream. He was like a fantasy above her. She felt the heavy strands of his hair touching her bare shoulders and she felt the incredible strength he used to stay above her.
She’d fallen into the dream-like quality of it all and became brave through the darkness to touch him. She’d fallen off a cliff into sensations so strong they made her entire body yearn. Trinity felt like warm steel. There were ropes and ridges beneath her palms, and it thrilled her to think a man of his quality and power wanted her. Her, little plump Beth, who’d been unable to catch a husband on her own … through two seasons.
Now she touched strength like none she could imagine. He’d come for her, he held himself under control … for her. Perhaps she was being cruel, trying to break his resolve. Nevertheless, some feminine intuition told her this was the way to bind him to her.
“Show me your breasts.” His voice was husky and raw.
She was surprised, chased by guilty feelings of being indecent. Then little thrills tugged her away from guilt, and to cover her flustered emotions, she blurted. “You can see me?”
“Everything,” his words rumbled above her.
A shudder of shocked awareness shivered through her. She hadn’t known. Her head tilted to the side away from where his gaze might be. How could she just show him her breasts? Her nails uncurled from his flesh where she’d clutched him too hard, but he hadn’t flinched away. Then, with immense dread and excitement combined, she tugged her gown down, baring her chest. They were too big.
“Perfect.” His voice was a husky purr and the tips of her nipples ached with twin pangs that coursed into her belly and lower. Suddenly she remembered the feel of Trinity’s persistent fingers touching her loins. Heaven help her if he’d sucked on her nipples too. She started to blank out those indecent thoughts, but then a pleased sound etched from his throat. “You are getting aroused, little virgin.”
Heat flushed her entire body, as she stammered. “I-I am not.”
“If you say so.”
Beth felt the bed shifting. He was moving. She braced herself for the feel of him grabbing her gown to pull it up or the feel of his hands grasping the mounds of her bare breasts. When neither happened, she tried to find herself in the darkness. She thought with a bit of confusion that Trinity might be lying next to her. Had she done something wrong? Was she supposed to do something now? Suddenly, she felt his hands warm on her bare flesh as he pulled her closer, until the mounds of her breasts were pressed into the side of his chest against his shirt. Her hand floundered above him wondering where to fall, then he clasped it and brought it to land on his chest.
Her heartbeat thudded as his hand smoothed over her lower back. “Go to sleep, Beth.” His murmur was at odds with the tautness she could feel in his body.
She was completely surprised. She knew there was more to the marriage bed. Even out on the lawn that seductive night he’d shown her naughty desirous things men and women did together. She wanted to ask him why he’d stopped. Part of her wanted to know and part of her felt as though she’d done such extraordinary things already … like lying bare-breasted in her husband’s arms. He wasn’t leaving her and that meant something.
Trinity felt each pounding of his shaft echo through his fangs and deeper. It was an urge that plucked at him incessantly as he forced his ardor to cool. Not an easy task. He’d wrung it to such heights and the partially naked object of his desire lay warmly against him. He measured his breathing, until he could once again breathe normally. He would control himself.
He had to admit he found it easier than he believed he would. However, he would continue to test himself, until he was as certain as a vampire who believed in morals could be, that he would come to Beth a mortal in conscience if not in body.
Chapter Twenty Two
Adam leapt down off the horse without letting the mare stop. He didn’t worry about tying the animal off. He didn’t care; his only thoughts were of Beth. His poor sister.
There was no fog in the night air, but there was a breeze as he sprinted toward the front door of his step uncle’s mansion. He noticed a carriage and another horse tied up nearby. Was Lady Ariel there consoling Beth, he wondered? She should be. It lightened the burden and hurt he felt. Beth was ruined, ostracized from society. They would never allow her among their ranks again.
“Bastards,” he spat for the unforgiving standards of the wealthy. If it hadn’t been for his fellow university student, Charles Wingate, decent fellow, coming to warn him what his sister had told him was, “The topic of the ton,” before the night’s round of parties and balls, he wouldn’t have known of Beth’s fall into social ruin.
He’d only left Beth that afternoon and she’d been set to visit Lady Ariel, and then travel on to the train station. Easily, she could have missed the horrible gossip and social cut. Something in his gut told him otherwise. If she hadn’t, he’d travel on to catch her fall when the ladies school denied her the job.
“My God, I have to do something,” he muttered, pushing open the front door. The thing causing him agony was … what? What could he possibly do to save his sister? He had nothing. Tears burned in his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them fall. He was terrified Beth’s only choice would be to stay at their step uncle’s … with Fanton.
“By God, I will stay here too. And she’ll not stop me,” he uttered beneath his breath as he came to a halt in the foyer.
It was nighttime and the last thing he wanted was to see Fanton. Simply thinking the thought made the side of his neck throb strangely. He grasped his neck, looking upstairs at the darkness. He’d search for her without calling her name. His hand fell from the pinpricks in his neck and he started toward the staircase.
Suddenly a man’s shout startled his steps and he halted. The shout had been muffled, but still loud. What the hell? Fanton? Whom could he be shouting at? He was afraid it might be Beth and he inched his way toward Fanton’s side of the mansion. He went to the entryway into the long hallway leading to Fanton’s suite of rooms.
Yes, there was definitely an argument going on in one of the rooms. Adam took several deep breaths, gathering the courage to move closer. A crash sounded and a door flew open. He nearly tripped over his own feet running for a place to hide. The other hallway was the only place he could get to by the time two figures moved into the foyer. Adam flattened his back against the wall, trying to make the outline of his body as small as he could.
“Do you have to rip them apart, you fucking noble?”
Adam didn’t recognize the man who shouted those fateful words, but he knew the other man. Fanton!
In between their words, they were hissing at each other in strange animalistic ways that made his skin crawl. Haunting premonitions told him, if they found him, he was in deep trouble and he glanced with panicked longing down the hall, where he wanted to run. The way they were standing in the foyer, though, they would see him if he moved away from the wall.
“What I do, river scum, is none of your concern.” Fanton’s voice was snide and rolling into guttural.
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br /> “Sire, to you!” the man wearing a black vest bellowed. He had pale, but fit arms and his dark hair was slicked and tied back. The man was definitely not a nobleman.
“Look at you, calling yourself, Sire. You will never be what I am. You will never have what I have,” Fanton snarled.
“So you think you’re some noble vampire, you idiot? I made you and I can unmake you. You’re not going to have the Blacknalls after my carcass!”
Adam sucked in a more startled breath than all the rest. Vampire? Oh God, he’d known. He’d known all along that Fanton was something … horrible.
“Just stay out of my business, Cull, and don’t come back here!” Fanton shouted like a man losing an argument, who fell back on threats that he may or may not be able to back up.
“Not this time, Governor,” Cull countered. “Only a foul vampire would mangle women like you do and not even take their blood. You were a cannibal before I turned you!”
“I’m just doing what you’d like to do!” Fanton shouted. He tried to grab Cull by his vest with the intention of throwing the lowlife liar out of his mansion. “I don’t live by your rules, ever!” he snarled, slashing his claws outward toward Cull.
“Then you die,” Cull spat lunging toward him.
Fanton felt the impact like nothing he’d felt in a long time. Other vampires were stronger than he’d realized. His body gave and bashed into the door, cracking the wood.
Cull’s hands latched onto his throat and squeezed inch by inch, lifting him up the wall. “Fight with a sire is a losing fight,” Cull growled with his claws cutting the flesh on Fanton’s neck and throat.
Fanton howled gurgling sounds with his throat restricted, realizing he’d horribly miscalculated the strength difference between his brawn and Cull’s wiry body. Fanton choked, clawing at Cull’s hands trying to loosen them. “You can’t kill a nobleman,” Fanton managed to gag.
Cull’s yellowed fangs glinted off the oil light overhead. “Oh, nob, you are so wrong about that.” Cull hefted him higher. “I’ve had trouble at my doorstep three times because of you, and I told you not to tell anyone about the wolfsbane.”