What secrets?
Aware of his hesitation, Elizabeth shoved him back so that he might observe the further opening of her legs. She did not quiver, nor feign any such naïveté as she did when they played games in the hallways, or with their tumbled assignations in other places. She would not let him discern what she wanted. She would allow him no time to scrutinize the symptoms he had sensed.
Cautiously, his hand slid between her warm, damp thighs. There came an answering throb between his own. He grunted aloud. Again, she smiled.
He parted the petals of her desire with his finger; it was a pale flower surrounded by a forest of fine, brown fur. Another throb hit him, distant, insistent. He worked his finger inside of this flowering of femininity, inching the surrogate shaft upward. A wave of moisture met him. Hot. Creamy. Smelling of dark, forbidden places. A shudder of delight shot through his limbs. His enlarged staff pressed tightly to her naked hip.
What secrets do you possess, dear Elizabeth?
He sent the question silently to her, yet adamantly.
Why the rush?
What is in it for you if the pleasure is quelled?
Though he entered her body roughly, she made no sound. One hard thrust into the heat of hell's inferno itself, and Elizabeth closed herself around him as only she had the mastery to do. He found her blisteringly heated and hazardously tight, though he had sheathed his sword in this scabbard enough times to wear her skin raw.
"Now," she said, as if he had done nothing, as if she felt nothing of his initial thrust.
Her eyes were exceedingly bright when he looked there. Green eyes flecked with gold. Something unsaid was delicately wrapped in that gold. He nearly pulled back.
"What are you waiting for?" she asked throatily. "Some pathetic virgin who hasn't the capacity for dancing with danger? Some yearling who can't treat a cock properly? Perhaps a vapid version of a woman who doesn't know what kind of things lurk in the darkened hallways of castles like this one? Someone unused to the shadows?"
"You do care, then?" Dante returned without any softening of the cock she had hoped to tease into submission.
"Care?" Elizabeth tossed back, maintaining a tight hold on the edge of the chest as Dante plunged into her depths yet again to prove a point.
"If you care, why don't you say so?" Dante suggested wryly, slamming himself into her with all his might, reaching, he knew, the very core of Elizabeth. And she laughed aloud and opened wider still.
"Why don't you make me," she challenged.
All right, he thought. You will play this game to the hilt, and I will join you in it. Or, he added insightfully, was it the other way around, and Elizabeth is meeting my challenge?
She began to move. Her sleek buttocks undulated. Her insides massaged him, drew him in, compelled him. Her pliant, determined body demanded he take heed, for the juices of her passion were flowing, game or none, luring him, surrounding him, trapping him in spite of everything.
He yanked her from the chest with his prick still buried deeply inside of her and stumbled to the wall. She cried out as her back met hard with the stone. She groaned as he gripped her thighs roughly in his hands. Yet she clamped her thighs around his waist, making it difficult for him to ease himself back.
Her smile was but a memory now. Intensity had overtaken her. Her eyes were closed. Dante stroked her dark, furry patch at the point where he had and was still penetrating her body. She loosened her hold on his back. Her eyelids flapped.
It was enough. He had won this battle, surely?
He jammed himself into her. And again. And again. Over and over, without hesitation or mercy, hearing the slap of her back against the stone, feeling the impact of his body meeting with hers with each breath he took. And Elizabeth rode the storm, wave for wave, refusing to scream or give in, seeming to revel in the excruciating intensity of the pleasure they shared.
Locked together, they tumbled to the floor, crying out for a satisfaction neither of them seemed yet able to find. Faster and faster, harder and deeper still Dante went into the maelstrom, needing to move her, seeking to make her back down. And then she lifted her chin. She turned her head slightly, exposing a glistening patch of pale skin across her throat.
My God, Dante thought fleetingly. So provocative. So white and smooth. So bloody smooth.
When the sky exploded, it was not with stars but with fire. Red fire. The flames of lust, greed, and maybe even hell itself beat against Dante's nakedness, bending his mind, drumming at his temples. He thought he heard himself cry out as Elizabeth pressed herself to him, as he took her skin between his teeth. With an ache of monstrous proportions that barely gave credence to her gesture, he poured every last bit of himself into Elizabeth Rothchilde. His final thrust shook them both to the bone.
And then with the heartiness of a conqueror, he bit right through her soft white flesh.
Chapter Four
« ^ »
Elizabeth's cry was inward, silent, and stuck in her throat. Ecstacy? Yes, she thought fleetingly, and then the sensation was replaced by a stab of pain that seared her flesh and scalded her blood to the point of boiling.
Her skin and stomach were alive with fire. Fire so vivid as to be insufferable. Was she dying? Was this what the shadow of death felt like?
Her body seized, muscles rigid with the faintest trace of fear, and then the mouth on her neck tugged harder still, sucking, drawing the fire upward through her arms and shoulders. Her blood rushed to meet his demands.
Dante's demands.
Blackness swallowed Elizabeth soon after shadows leaned in. Even the flicker of the candle could not hide what was taking place: Dante's dark head against her cheek, Dante's teeth embedded into her flesh. And yet she seemed somehow removed from these things, curiously distanced from the action she had invited.
Oh yes, she had invited it. Him. This. She had asked for Dante to show himself, and now she had gone beyond the realms of couplings and torrid sexual assignations. She had wanted to know. She had had to know. So why now fight what she had gathered to her? Surely it was too late to struggle? Much too late to protest? The fire had reached her throat. Everything below was lost to feeling, to sensation, having been forsaken in the name of love. Sense had been abandoned for this one man, for this particular creature.
Christopher Dante.
Should she give in? Elizabeth considered this. The thought fled. She brought it back again. And then feeling suddenly reappeared, as though it had not truly been distanced for good.
A throb accompanied the drawing of her life's blood. Faintly it came on, the sensation similar to catching and holding a man's eyes for the first time after secretly lusting for him. A sensation exchangeable for the impact of lips touching for the first time.
Flames rushed downward through her chest, abdomen, thighs, and over her heated skin, the fire now coursing, singeing, insistent. Down the heat went, toward the site of her sexual pleasures, toward the door whose key she had distributed to one man only. To a man who was not merely a man.
Could there possibly be any blood left to engorge the organs driving her desire? Yes. She felt it now. God, how she felt it. Waves of heat burst, then retreated, flaring white-hot, darting in and out of the space between her thighs. God. Oh, God.
What was he doing?
She shook, moved, undulated. Still, she had no control over her arms. Her back arched with an audible crack. Her legs opened. Only then did she notice that Dante's mouth had left her neck, and that Dante's eyes—his great dark eyes—were peering into her own.
She went into those eyes, felt herself drowning, slipping.
"Elizabeth," Dante whispered.
As if he had control over her very consciousness, Elizabeth's attention returned to his face. Dante's features filled in where only paleness had reigned. Black eyebrows arched severely over his luminous eyes, eyes as bottomless as her greed for him had been. His full lips opened, revealing the dagger-like sharpness of his teeth. But there was something else. His
cock grew steadily harder against her thigh.
Elizabeth wanted that great hard shaft inside of her. She had never wanted anything so badly. The desire nearly drove her mad, and yet she was helpless amid the intensity of the heat and loss of control. She could not pull him close, nor could she press herself up against him to show him how much she needed what he could offer. She could not move her lips.
But Dante knew well enough what she needed. Perhaps he had read her mind? He rolled on top of her, seemingly weightless. His shaft once more entered her heat. She could feel this! This was what she wanted!
Dante began to move, slowly, rhythmically. All the while, he looked into her eyes, never leaving her, his expression sober, almost pained.
"And now you know," Dante said, velvet voice mingling with the blaze and the sizzling juices her body produced without her help. "You know what I am."
Elizabeth tried again to form a word. She tried desperately to move her lips. Dante laid a finger against them as he plunged again into her body's waiting inferno. And again.
Breath caught at Elizabeth's throat, stuck. Dante's hands encircled her throat, gently closing in.
"And what will you do with this knowledge?" Dante asked, body continuing its furious dance with hers, fingers massaging her throat softly.
He would not kill her, Elizabeth decided. He would have done so already had that been on his mind. Of course, she had considered the fact that this night might very well be the end of her. What beast would want his secrets brought to light? Nevertheless, she had to take the chance, had to see if he felt anything for her. She had to keep him occupied—with her, inside of her—long enough for Dante to lose sight of the other… woman. Her brother's vermin. Satan's bride.
"Ah." The sound escaped from her closed throat. Dante drank in her cry by placing his mouth over hers. His hips stopped moving. He eased himself back.
No! she wanted to shout.
Dante's expression rearranged as he stared at her face. In a graceful rise to his feet, he scooped her up into his arms. He held her against him, while her own limbs dangled uselessly over the carpet like things disconnected.
Her head lolled. She could not lift it, could barely breathe. Had the fire grown dimmer? Was life draining away after all? Is this why he'd stopped?
The room began to spin, slowly at first, then faster. Dante! she thought, before losing the shape of his name.
He looked down at her, his face still pale, still white, not at all flushed from his conquest. "Yes," he whispered. "You are alive, my dearest Elizabeth. Foolish, but alive."
She floated downward. Softness met her. Pillows. Bed. His angular, deftly chiseled face came closer. "This is what you wanted?" he asked. "To be sure of what I am? To hold my secrets so completely as to have me a slave to your future wishes?"
Could the devil be so perfectly chiseled? Elizabeth wondered. Was Dante's beautiful countenance held together by magic? Beauty to draw beauty? Perhaps his face, his wide shoulders and narrow waist were carefully chosen from the pools of the blood of his victims. Perhaps the sheen of his rugged beauty was outward only, and inside of him only hunger persisted.
His dark expressive eyes now lacked spark. The white spaces surrounding them were swimming with red. "Rest, my beautiful and foolish Elizabeth," Dante said, sweeping her hair back with his fingers, laying his palm to her cheek. "Your strength will return on the morrow if you care for it. We shall see then what your secrets are."
Leaving a kiss on her forehead, he then distanced himself. Without his attention, Elizabeth could think more clearly. The fog began to clear. Secrets, he had said. But he had not gotten them from her, even though he had shared his own. Christopher Dante had no idea what she had protected him from this night and what she might have given up to do so. He had no idea who she had saved him from.
But that was not all, not the extent of things, she reminded herself. Not by the half. Dante might have her lust, her love, her loyalty, and even a taste of her life's blood, but Dante did not know everything.
She closed her eyes, drifted, and fell.
Chapter Five
« ^ »
Rothchilde castle's halls were mired in the fading echo of his own shout when Dante slipped quietly from Elizabeth's rooms. The sound seemed deafening; it seemed to rumble through the very stone and mortar surrounding him.
He paused to lean against the thick stone wall and found it icy after the warmth of Elizabeth's bed. He found the hallway air dank after the luscious scent of Elizabeth's naked limbs.
He inhaled, coughed, wiped a thin trickle of blood from his lip with the back of his hand. He stared at the blood, then glanced toward Elizabeth's closed door, able to feel her in there, able to hear her breathing. Able to hear the rush of blood in her veins.
He almost smiled—until he remembered that he had not pulled her secrets from her, after all. He had not won, nor even been a player in this latest game of hers, it suddenly seemed. Damn it all to hell. The round belonged to her, didn't it?
Most disturbing.
Arms lowered, Dante stood straighten. What had she kept from him, and how had she kept it? Why was he grinning, in spite of himself? It very well could be that he, plainly, simply, had succumbed to Feminine Mystique. Him. After all this time. And though he had tried to fight it, he knew now for certain that he was not immune to the lure of Elizabeth's wiles, no matter how much his thoughts intended to stray. Worse yet, as Elizabeth lay nestled in the great bed, he had found her strangely fragile. Almost compellingly vulnerable.
"Pah!" he spat. "Elizabeth, vulnerable?" But his thoughts refused to reassemble in any kind of usable order once he had considered this. Elizabeth had done this to him, had taken from him his wits. She had robbed him of his manhood—whatever of his manhood he still retained—and he couldn't even guess how she had done it. Mightn't the loss of superiority he suddenly felt be due to the fact that Elizabeth hadn't been satisfied with his performance?
A wave of apprehension washed over him.
Why?
Again, he looked to her door. Had Elizabeth expected something more from this dark union?
How long had she known what he was?
"Bloody damn and blast!"
What was Elizabeth trying to do? Why would she seek out a member of the devil's clan, she who had long survived without succumbing to it? How could she invite him into her bed and then trust him to leave her soul the way he'd found it? Well, almost the way he had found it.
Grinning wickedly, he recalled the shape of Elizabeth's luscious hips. The feel of her seamless skin. The way she had used both of those things to ensnare him.
And now she knew what he was. She would have no doubts about it. Devil's spawn. Nightshade. Predator. He had been called many things in many places, but no voice had ever raised against him twice. No one had ever withstood his careful scrutiny. Those who strayed, those who had rallied against his kind had died terrible deaths. Unspeakable deaths. Yet… Elizabeth Rothchilde had offered herself up. Sought him out. Elizabeth Rothchilde, for all her obvious guile, was indeed a formidable woman. The exception.
Or else it was some kind of an elaborate trap.
"Duke?"
The hallway darkened for Dante. His smile dissolved.
"Duke?"
The approaching scent was of youth, of sour, unbathed flesh.
"A note for you, my lord," a young lad said in a voice that wavered as much as his image did in the flickering candlelight.
Dante tilted his head, wary of the interruption. Then he stretched out a hand to accept the bit of parchment the lad held at arm's length. A roar of hunger pounded in his chest. A bit of leftover dampness gathered on his brow as he worked to keep this hunger at bay—hunger for the lean muscle and strongly pounding heartbeat inside of the lad's scrawny chest.
"What is it, I wonder?" Dante pondered, staring at the paper, unable to focus.
"I do not know, Duke Dante. Will you require anything further?"
The lad's tenor w
as nasal. His arms shook as though they had just been plunged into a bucket of ice water.
"Have you anything warm to drink?" Dante taunted.
"No. No, my lord. Shall I—"
Dante held up a hand to cut off the lad's excuse. Something else nagged at him. He closed his eyes, lifted the paper closer to his nostrils. Perfumed paper. Exotic. He opened his eyes, waved a hand at the waiting lad. "Off with you then."
The lad nodded, bowed his head, and took two steps backwards, still facing Dante.
"There is something further?" Dante inquired, lowering the parchment, wondering who would miss this lad in the morning when he didn't make himself available for work.
"She… she bid me make certain you read the note, Duke Dante."
Dante fingered the parchment but did not take his eyes from the lad's ashen face. "Whom do you speak of, then?"
"Lord Rothchilde's…"
"Bride?"
"'Twas the woman who gave me the note."
"Ah, I see. And where does Rothchilde's future bride reside, lad?"
"His future bride is in the tower."
The tower. So close to the light when the sun needed to rise, Dante thought. How long had he spent with Elizabeth? How much time was left until sunrise?
"The lady bid you wait at this hour?" Dante asked. "Well then, we cannot have you miss your beauty sleep, can we?"
Sensing the lad's nervousness, able to smell the lad's malaise, Dante lifted the parchment. The paper was sealed with a stamped crest. Blood-red wax bound the edges of the paper.
At the sight of the wax, Dante's hunger flared. The lad's heartbeat became infuriatingly loud.
"Do you belong to the woman in the tower, the sender of this note, or to the castle?" Dante asked the lad.
"I serve Lord Rothchilde," the lad said bravely enough, for all the weakness of its conviction.
"Have you served him long?"
Immortal Bad Boys Page 18