by Alyssa Day
He twirled her in a quick loop and then bent her down into a dip. Several of the people standing nearby started clapping, and she could hear the murmurs.
“Isn’t that Lady Fiona Campbell? The book author?”
“Making a spectacle of herself—”
“That’s the man who was on TV with her this afternoon—”
She pulled away from Christophe and walked off the dance floor, her head held high, smiling distantly over the heads of the nosy gossipmongers. He caught up to her in two strides of his impossibly long, hard-muscled legs and pulled her hand into his.
“Thanks for the dance, Princess. It’s been a while.”
“Really? Last year? Last month? When was the last time you treated anyone to your dance prowess?” She heard the sarcasm in her voice, but it was one of her defense mechanisms when she was embarrassed.
“Not hardly. The last time I danced like that was in those dance classes I told you about. The palace housekeeper’s daughter took pity on us and rounded up some girls so we didn’t have to dance with each other. I can tell you that even as a kid, Bastien—one of my fellow warriors—was huge and the gods know that he had at least three left feet.” His shudder at the memory was so heartfelt that she laughed in spite of herself.
“These stories are very entertaining, whether they’re true or not.”
“They’re true. I’ll prove it to you soon, but part of me is hoping you come to believe me without needing evidence,” he said.
She glanced up at him and his face had hardened into an expressionless mask. He’d put up his defenses again, and she knew the time for dancing and joking, brief as it had been, was over.
“Let’s go and talk to some vampires, then,” she said, changing direction to make for the exit. “I’ve already written my check to the hosting organization.”
He tightened his grip on her arm. “There is no we. You are going home and Denal is going to babysit while I do some investigating. That Fae, and if I’m not very badly mistaken he’s a Fae lord, which is even worse news, just warned us off of Vanquish. The last thing you need is to be caught anywhere near this investigation.”
She yanked her hand away from his, stuck on a single word. “Did you say babysit? Do you think of me as a baby?” She kept the smile pasted on her face for the benefit of anyone watching, but fury was burning a hole in her throat. “Babysit?”
He put his arm around her shoulders again and herded her over to the Reading Room, where a bored-looking museum employee was standing guard.
“Sorry, no guests tonight, renovation,” he recited in a monotone.
Quicker than thought, Christophe grabbed the man’s chin with one hand. “We’re going in,” he said gently.
“You’re going in,” the man repeated, staring wide-eyed up at Christophe.
“Nobody else comes in.”
“Nobody else.”
“You never saw us.”
“Never saw you.”
Christophe released the man, who continued to stare straight ahead as if dazed or in a trance. Christophe pulled Fiona into the room and turned left until they were out of the line of sight of the doorway.
“What was that? You have mind control, too?”
He shrugged, but the faint glow still reflecting light from his eyes was all the confirmation she needed.
“Is that what you did to me? Put some kind of mind control on me to make me go along with your crazy schemes? To . . . to get me into bed?”
All amusement drained from his face. An expression that almost looked like hurt flashed in his eyes, and then was gone. “Is that what I did, Princess? Be honest with yourself and with me. Which one of us cast the spell on the other? Because I can’t seem to get through five minutes without wanting to kiss you. To strip you naked and taste your skin. Right now I’d bend you over that table and drive my cock into your perfect body if I thought you would let me, so tell me, Fiona. Who is in control here?”
He stood apart from her, his hands clenched at his sides, and didn’t make a move to touch her. “Just go if you want to go. Hells, I’m used to it. I still plan to find the Siren and I’ll give you Vanquish when I retrieve it. But you never have to see me again.”
He meant it, too. She knew this man, somehow. He stood, shoulders hunched as if in defeat, waiting for her to leave. People had let him down before. Betrayed him. She could see the signs of it—the same signs that she’d seen in her father before he died, betrayed by his own father.
She’d always regretted that she hadn’t been old enough to help her father. This time, with this man, she could do something about it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered. “Let’s figure this out together.”
He raised his head, his eyes widening with disbelief or wonder. “Are you sure? I won’t offer you an out again. I’m finding I like having you around.”
She tried out her best seductive smile. “You may like me even more when I tell you I’ve absolutely nothing on underneath this dress. How long will that mind control hold over the guard?”
Christophe almost fell over. She wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t abandoning him, although she wasn’t sure how to believe him about Atlantis or even his age. No, instead, she was walking toward him, smiling a wicked little smile, all but asking him to take her.
Who was he to turn down a lady?
He pounced on her, lifting her off her feet and into a fierce embrace. He found her mouth and devoured it, kissing her with all the relief and hunger he felt. A stark, implacable knowledge had risen deep inside him and was consuming him with forbidden flames.
She was his.
He put her lovely ass down on the nearest table and pulled her legs around him as he stepped into the cradle of her thighs.
“Really? Isn’t that terribly decadent behavior for a princess?” He kissed his way down the side of her neck, kissed her delicate collarbones, and then kissed the rounded tops of her breasts. “Do you know, I’ve wanted to pop you out of this all evening?”
He proceeded to do just that, encouraged by her indrawn breath and the flush rising on her pearly skin. He scooped first her left, then her right breast out of the fabric of the dress and sighed in utter satisfaction at the sight of her rosy nipples hardening and pointing at him. “Like tiny little Atlantean blushberries,” he murmured. “Just begging me to suck on them.”
He pulled gently, them more firmly, on her nipple with his tongue and lips, his cock hard as tempered steel and growing harder by the second as she whimpered and pulled his head toward her with her hands.
“Oh, that’s so good—oh, wait. Someone could walk in any moment,” she whispered urgently.
“And that’s even more exciting for you, isn’t it?” He stood and stared into her eyes, while he slid his hands up from her ankles to her knees, pulling her knees farther apart, and then from her knees to her inner thighs, which were trembling. “We could be caught by any one of those aristocratic ninnies.”
Her breath caught. “What about Fairsby?”
“They’re gone, remember? Oh, what’s this?” His fingers found liquid heat. “Are you wet for me, Lady Fiona?”
She trembled in his arms. “All the time, it seems,” she confessed in a whisper. “If not mind control, what have you done to me?”
“The same thing you’ve done to me, I hope. And I plan to do it again, right now. Right here.” He kissed her again, then unfastened his pants and released his straining cock. “I’m going to fuck you right here in the middle of the British Museum, and you’re going to love it.”
She caught his face between her hands. “You’re going to love it, too,” she said fiercely.
He centered his cock and plunged into her, and was rewarded by her tiny cry. “Oh, yeah.”
She stopped him. “Condom?”
“Fiona, I swear to you on my oath as a warrior that we are safe.”
She looked deeply into his eyes for a long moment, an eternity of a moment, and he had all but resigned himself
to calling up an icy cold shower when she nodded.
“Yes. I believe you.”
“Thank you,” he said fervently, but then he didn’t talk for a while, because he was too busy kissing her. He kissed her while he drove his cock into her warm, wet center; plunging deeper and deeper into her, answering every lift of her hips with another thrust. He couldn’t get enough of her—he wanted her over and over, in every way possible.
He wanted her for always. The thought made him thrust deeper.
Her sheath tightened around him and she dug her fingers into his shoulders. “I’m—oh, I’m coming, Christophe. Please, harder. Faster.”
“Anything for a lady,” he said, his breath coming in harsh, rapid pants. He grabbed her hips and lifted her up and off the table, so her full weight was supported in his arms, and thrust harder, deeper, and faster, until she tightened around him and started bucking in his arms. He captured her cry with his mouth and thrust again, releasing his own seed, spurting long and hard into her welcoming heat.
When they both finally quit coming, he rested her back on the table and carefully, regretfully, withdrew. They were both breathing too hard to talk, so he removed from his pocket the handkerchief Hopkins had so thoughtfully provided and offered it to her.
“Thanks. I think I saw some napkins over there,” she whispered, her cheeks blushing again. She was such a fascinating contradiction of wanton and innocent, his woman.
His woman. He was beginning to like the sound of that.
Maybe he was bewitched—but if so, it was the normal enchantment between a man and a woman. One he’d thought he would never experience. Far more than mere sex.
He filed the thought away to consider later. They cleaned up and he kissed her again. A long, slow, gentle kiss.
She took a deep breath. “Are you ready to go pub hopping?”
“I can’t talk you out of this?”
“No. We’re partners, remember?”
He took her hand. “You can never, ever leave my side. And if I tell you to run, you do it. Understand?”
“Perfectly.”
“Okay, let’s do this. And, Fiona?”
“Yes?”
“This is my new favorite museum.”
She blushed all the way to the car.
Chapter 19
The slightly pointed tips of Gideon’s ears had been practically on fire by the time he’d stepped outside the museum. Whoever—or whatever—that upstart Christophe was, Gideon would enjoy every second of the torture he planned for the man. How dare he touch Fiona? She was to be Gideon’s. She would belong to him and only him. For a very long time. Eternity, perhaps, if he deigned to share the elixir with her before tiring of her. For her to be in the arms of another man made Gideon want to crush the entire museum into rubble, with the aristocracy still inside it. It would certainly be no loss to the world.
Not a good idea, though, considering his current plans. Still, Gideon wanted to lash out at someone to take the edge off his rage, but Maeve, the little coward, had run off to her car without a word, and now he was fuming in the backseat of his own car, like the impotent English lord he was supposed to be.
Enough. His meeting with Telios wasn’t scheduled for hours, but since when did Fae lords need to adhere to schedules?
“Stop the car,” he ordered his driver. “I’ll get out here.”
The driver, at least, knew better than to argue. He pulled the car to an immediate stop, and Gideon stepped out. He would make better time via his own method of travel, and he knew exactly where he was going. The St. Mary’s tube station, on Whitechapel Road.
One simple bend in light and space later, Gideon stood inside the permanently closed station of London’s Underground, looking around in disgust. A few burning torches lit the darkness to a dim glow. Most vampires were not known for attention to cleanliness, and Telios was no exception. At least there were no drained bodies lying about, although the stench attested to their recent presence. The rank odor of decaying flesh was practically suffocating in the claustrophobic space.
“What’s the matter, Fae? A little too dark for you?” Telios’s voice grated, as always, but this time it held a little more of an annoying quality. A bit of smugness, perhaps.
Gideon would enjoy crushing that.
“Do you know the history of this place?” Telios gestured at the rubble piled against the bricked-up platform. “Opened in 1884. Perfect timing for me, since there was always a fine hiding place in that storage room just off the platform. Ate a few workers, I did. But the station closed down in the late 1930s. They used it again as a war shelter against air raids for a bit during World War II, but a bomb smashed the building to bits. Too bad, really. It was easy enough to snatch a few of the fools rushing down into the dark to escape danger. Escaping the bombs, don’t you know? Not so effective, when certain death lies in wait.” He cackled and did a complicated kind of mincing dance. “Now that nobody ever comes down here anymore, it’s mine. All mine.”
Gideon’s lips curled back from his teeth. The vampire truly was insane. But Gideon didn’t care about sanity, so long as Telios had acquired the sword.
“Did you get it?”
Telios quit dancing and gave Gideon a far too shrewd look. “I may have.”
“What does that mean? Either you did or you did not. Beware my anger, nightwalker. You are not immortal, for all of your pretense.” Gideon called to the earth for power, but he was bricked away from too much of it for the surge he needed. Not that vampires had real life force to drain, in any case, but it would be satisfying to destroy this particular vampire.
Not yet, though. He needed that sword.
“I got it,” Telios admitted. “It’s not here, though. I almost got caught, getting away. Had to stash it. I’ll go back for it tonight. There are other vampires searching for it, or so I’ve heard. Shifters, too. What is it about that sword?”
“Now, you fool. Get it now. I need that sword,” Gideon roared, his hands clenching at his side. Twice thwarted in one evening was twice too much for a Fae lord who had not been denied his will in centuries. There would not be a third time.
“Bring it to me tonight. Or you will pay the price in pain.”
“Why do you want it so much?” Telios’s eyes gleamed a deep red in the flickering torchlight. “What makes that sword so important to you?”
Gideon hesitated. Perhaps, in his anger and frustration, he’d overplayed his hand. “I simply want it. There is nothing more important about it than any of my other treasures.”
Telios nodded, but Gideon was almost certain he saw a flash of the vampire’s fangs, as if it dared smile at him.
“All right then. Whatever you say. I’ll try to bring it to you tonight. The price has gone up, though. I want six.”
Utter revulsion gripped Gideon at the thought of turning over six wood nymphs to Telios for his sadistic pleasure. Not, of course, that he’d ever intended to relinquish even the two the vampire had originally requested in the bargain. Telios’s death would solve that issue.
“You will not try, you will succeed,” Gideon commanded. “Do not fail. Bring me that sword or else you will be very sorry. We will discuss payment later.” He opened the fabric of space again and stepped through, not noticing until after he’d reached his destination—Fairsby Manor—that Telios was dancing again, and the vampire seemed far too happy for one who had been threatened by an Unseelie Court prince.
Gideon considered and discarded the idea of returning to Telios’s lair and teaching the vampire a lesson. Instead, he lashed out and smashed the lamp off the table in his study, but it was a pathetically feeble outlet for his fury. Once Telios delivered the sword, Gideon would kill him, anyway. Simply to give himself pleasure in a day that had held little. Once he had the Siren, the Unseelie Court queen would understand what the Fae must do in this conflict. It was their time again. Time for the Fae to rule over all of humanity and destroy any vampire or shifter who thought otherwise.
It
was Fae destiny. It was his destiny. He would be a god. If she were very, very lucky, he might make Fiona his goddess.
Chapter 20
Fiona bumped her head on the roof of the car as she shimmied out of her gown.
“I must be blessed beyond all men,” Christophe said. “This is twice so far this evening I’m getting you naked, and the night’s not even half over.”
“A gentleman would turn his head,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head.
He started laughing. “You’ve got the wrong guy, Princess. I don’t plan to ever miss a chance to see you without your clothes on.”
She called the shadows and, bending light and dark to her will, disappeared from view.
“That’s so unfair,” he growled.
“Don’t mess with a ninja.”
“You know, you could have done that in the museum if anybody walked in on us.”
“And wouldn’t you have looked foolish standing there alone with your bits hanging out?”
He grumbled something in that melodic language. She wanted to ask, but was afraid he’d say it was, indeed, Atlantean and they’d be back to that. She pulled on her underwear and jeans, tricky but not impossible in the backseat of the moving automobile, and finally dressed, she released the shadows and lowered the privacy glass and pushed her dress through to the front passenger seat. It landed in a heap with the bodice sitting upright.
“Brilliant,” Sean said. “It looks like I was driving along, and my date melted right out of her dress.”
“Better work on your conversational skills, friend,” Christophe advised. “You probably bored her to death.”
Sean glared at Christophe then met Fiona’s gaze in the mirror. “So, do you really like this guy? Do I have to be nice to him?”
“Play nice, boys. Please. Sean, do you have my bag?”
He handed the leather tote back to her, and she pulled out a handful of chunky costume jewelry, her makeup kit, and a short black wig. She quickly donned the bracelets, rings, and necklaces, and then examined herself in the rearview mirror, considering. She added a pair of giant hoop earrings she’d never normally be caught dead wearing. Then she brushed on a thick layer of dark makeup. Smoky eyes, dark red lipstick, and bronzer. The final touch was the wig. She fit it around her head, pinning her hair underneath it. When she was satisfied that not a single strand of blond showed, she leaned back in her seat and turned to Christophe.