by Nancy Morse
Inwardly, Pru groaned. Was there nothing they could talk about that did not lead down this dangerous path? Vampires lived that long, and longer. She herself had been living now, both alive and dead, for nearly a century, and Nicolae far longer than that. If it weren’t so hideously sad, she might have laughed.
“Stede, let’s not talk about the past. Let’s leave it where it belongs.”
“You’re right. There’s just one more thing.” He took her hand in his and gripped it tightly as he stared into her eyes. “I didn’t think I could love anyone as much as I loved Evangeline, but now I’m not so sure.” He leaned forward, bringing his head close to hers, and kissed her lightly on the lips.
Her joy surged at the possibility that he might love her. She drew his breath into her being and returned with equal ardor the deepening kiss.
He laid her back against a soft carpet of grass and slid his body on top of hers. “Don’t worry,” he said, nuzzling her neck, “nobody ever comes to this spot.
Oh, how long it had been since she’d been laid bare to a man, when she had ached for a man’s eyes upon her, his hands all over her, his heat filling her up to bursting.
He was a considerate lover, with a slow and steady hand that gentled her for a long, loving time and lips that glided over her skin like skaters on ice. She opened her eyes and gazed at the dark lashes so close to her face, and beyond the green canopy to white wisps of clouds riding in a sapphire sky. Evening was coming upon them, cool and sweet, bathing the land in an opalescent light.
She squirmed beneath his hand that delved deep into her bodice to caress her breasts while his tongue sought the recesses of her mouth, delving in and out like a consummate lover. All around her she could hear the rushing of the river and the sounds of far-off voices of the men on the flatboats coming from throughout the Mississippi Valley with their bounty of goods. The hot green scent of summer rose from the ground, mingling with the ambrosia of his skin, filling her with unspeakable delight.
This was not a mad rush at passion or the heated demands of a selfish lover, but a tender union nearly bringing her to tears. Having been initiated by a lover as harsh and demanding as Nicolae, she never imagined how sweet it could be. All the lovemaking of the past shrank to nothing against the sublime loveliness of this pirate’s touch.
When he reached beneath her skirt to cup the silky softness at the apex of her thighs, she felt suddenly shy and apprehensive. His fingers caressed her intimately as his lips pressed wet kisses to her temples, her cheekbones, and the corners of her mouth. She could feel him fumbling with his breeches to extricate his arousal. He pushed her skirt up past her hips and she felt his hardness brush her thighs.
She cried out when he came into her in one swift, sure move, not from pain but from the sheer joy of it, as though she were being taken for the very first time. Gripping the woven fabric of the breeches at his flanks, she shut her eyes tight and held on to him until she felt him burst within her at the same time that her own climax washed over her. Panting, they clung to each other, thrusting and writhing in the grass.
Her carnal needs had grown so strong over the decades that the thirst to satisfy her sexual cravings had become almost as great as the blood lust over which she had no control. She had known other men intimately through the decades. Nicolae, her vampire lover, was notoriously expert at pleasuring a woman. Others were no more than boys, sweet and fumbling. Some were big and strongly built, some slender and beautiful. Some were men of power and means and some had not a penny to their names. Some she drank from. Some she let live.
But never had she found a man worth loving…until now. Stede Bonham’s happy-go-lucky nature and infectious smile were rare treats indeed, and she’d be lying to herself if she said she didn’t find his way of life a little bit thrilling, although she could have done without the knowledge that he had killed the captain and crew of the French ship. Aside from that, he was handsome and reckless and personable.
Lying in her pirate’s arms in the aftermath of their lovemaking, she felt satisfied, and for the moment, unmindful of the danger of loving a man who was all too mortal.
And yet, although she was sated and satisfied from their lovemaking, she did not have that thoroughly ravished feeling as she had each time Nicolae had taken her, and she felt a little disappointed over it. Stede’s was a safe kind of intercourse; Nicolae’s was wild and dangerous.
Rolling toward Stede, she placed a kiss on his lips. “Do you think I’m terribly wicked?”
He opened his eyes and looked at her. His face was washed in the glow of sunset that accentuated the handsome boyish features. “I like a woman who knows what she wants.” He smiled crookedly. “I have a feeling there’s more to you than meets the eye. Next time we’ll go to my cottage and you can show me just how wicked you are.”
“Next time?”
“Are you free tomorrow night?”
She smiled suggestively.
“Good. I’ll send my carriage to pick you up. We’ll have dinner, and then, well…” His words trailed off discreetly.
As much as Pru craved his flesh, she wanted so much more than that. “Stede, if all you want is the pleasure of a woman’s body, there are so many others to choose from.”
“Hey now,” he said, disengaging himself and sitting up. “It’s not like that. At least not with you. You’re right, beautiful women are everywhere. And I’d be lying if I said I don’t want your body, but I want more than that from you.”
Her lashes fluttered demurely, and she dared to ask, “What do you want?”
“I want to know how you like to be touched. I want to know what you look like in the morning when you wake up. What makes you angry. What makes you happy. What secrets you’re hiding. I want it all. Hell, Pru, it’s happening so fast. I don’t know where all this is leading, but I sure would like to find out.”
Pru’s heart sang even as a small voice at the back of her mind cautioned against revealing too much of herself until she was sure Stede Bonham could be trusted with her dark secret.
The lights of the old French city lay before them, and the moon hung like a silver disk over the cypresses as the carriage rolled in from the bayou road. It stopped before the house on Rue Bourbon. Stede jumped down and hurried to the other side to help Pru out. Before she could take her leave, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her. His arms were reluctant to let her go. “Tomorrow, then?”
“Tomorrow,” she whispered.
She watched him climb back aboard and give the horse a tap of the whip, her heart aflutter as the carriage disappeared down the street.
Chapter 6
The fronds of the banana trees rustled against the galleries running the length of the house, and the courtyard ground was littered with the fallen, ripened fruit of the old lime tree.
Pru hurried along the slate walk, her steps slowing at the sound of hushed voices sifting into the night. Looking up, she saw two figures seated on the balcony, the parlor doors open behind them. The fragrance of honeysuckle and orange blossoms filled the air, but it was the perfume of a different sort that chilled her as if a dark wind has passed overhead. She would recognize that sweet, smooth-flowing, evil scent anywhere.
Inside, a sliver of yellow light came from beneath the French doors that opened onto the parlor. Beyond the dark polished wood she heard the clinking of crystal glasses. All thoughts of the tree-lined levee in the moonlight and Stede’s silky touch vanished when she threw open the doors.
The parlor was dimly lit by a single candle whose flame danced when she entered, casting shadows across the plaster ceiling. The heavy velvet drapes of the gallery windows were drawn tight. Across the room two figures were silhouetted on the balcony, the dark red blood in their glasses glistening like garnets in the moonlight. What was he doing here?
She stood motionless for several moments watching him drain his glass. His movements were elegant and deceiving. There was a noticeable flush on his pale and perfect features, proof that he had
recently fed on human blood and not the chicken blood her papa offered from the decanter. No doubt, he was as warm as toast after his killing.
He shifted slightly in his chair. “Are you going to stand there all night, Prudence?”
The sound of his voice, arrogant and mocking, forced movement into her limbs. She came forward across the Oriental carpet to join them on the balcony.
The breeze from the river blew up the ends of her hair. She had not bothered to sweep it up and put the pins back in to hold it in place. The burnished strands, tangled by Stede’s fingers, hung long and loose down her back.
“There you are, Pruddy,” her papa said. “Did you have a pleasant day, dear?”
Twisting the stem of his glass between his long, elegant fingers, Nicolae cast an all-consuming look over her, and said, “I would venture to guess you had a satisfying day. Although perhaps not as thoroughly satisfying as you might have wished?”
His ability to pinpoint her innermost thoughts made her cringe. She’d always felt stark naked before him, even when fully clothed.
She bent to place a kiss on her papa’s cheek. “Yes, Papa, I had an exhilarating day.” She aimed a scornful look at Nicolae and saw a lean muscle jump in his cheek, proof that her well-aimed barb hit its target.
“Won’t you join us?” James said. “We were just toasting the delightful coincidence of all of us being in New Orleans at the same time.”
“How serendipitous,” she remarked sourly.
“Nicholas was giving me pointers on how best to live within the confines of our condition.”
“Nicholas?” she echoed.
“Our young friend prefers to be called Nicholas now, and we must respect that.”
Those green eyes sparkled arrogantly. “We must adapt to the times, Prudence.”
She heaved an exasperated sigh. “Like I said, I don’t care what you call yourself.”
James lifted an inquisitive brow. “Like you said?”
“It’s nothing Papa.”
“Honestly, how you two do go on.” James got up and turned toward the parlor. “I’m going to fetch my latest composition. Do try to be good until I get back.”
Pru smiled sweetly. “Yes, Papa.”
When he was gone, Nicholas asked, “Do you think he suspects?”
“Suspects what?”
“What you were doing today.” He lifted his face and sniffed the air. “I can smell it on you.
“Nicolae, if you—” She stopped abruptly when he turned his face away from her. “Very well, Nicholas,” she relented with biting sarcasm. Knowing it was useless to deny what she’d been doing, she warned, “If you breathe one word to him, I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Hate me even more than you already do?”
“That would not be possible.”
He got up and sauntered to the railing. “You’ll just have to trust me to keep your little secret.”
She came to stand beside him and cast a disdainful glance over him. He was dressed impeccably in a frock coat of dark taupe cut velvet with floral silk embroidery meant to look like lace along the edges, matching velvet breeches and a lace jabot at his neck. An ivory silk waistcoat embroidered with bright gold threads captured the starlight. His profile etched against the night was so sublimely beautiful she might have forgotten what a scoundrel he really was. His was an ethereal beauty, almost as if it had descended from Heaven, refined and perfect down to arch of his brows and the curve of his lips. He’d put on weight and muscle since those nights in London. No longer fragile-looking, now he exuded a visible robustness to match his immortal strength. How different his pallid handsomeness and tall, well-formed physique was compared to Stede Bonham’s stockiness and sun-browned appeal.
Her voice drifted into the stillness of the Louisiana night. “I’d no sooner trust you than Satan.”
He turned his head and looked at her with those astonishingly green eyes that held the power to turn her to liquid with a mere glance. “One day, Prudence, you’re going to have need of me. And I don’t mean just for the pleasure that only I can give you.” He lifted his hand from the iron railing and caressed her breast through the silken fabric of her dress. “You see? Even now, you do not pull away. Do you remember what it was like for us? Don’t tell me you don’t dream about it. Long for it. Can your pirate take you to the heights you have been to with me?” At the drawing in of her breath, he chuckled deep in his chest. “I didn’t think so.” He withdrew his hand. “You and I aren’t finished using each other in the most delicious ways.”
“You’re disgusting,” she spat as she flinched away.
“You never thought I was disgusting when I was deep inside of you.”
“If I ever come to you, Nicholas, make no mistake, it will be only for that. I will use you and then discard you like yesterday’s newspaper.”
There was a time when the wince in his beautiful eyes would have made her regret her harsh words, but it didn’t now. She wasn’t the same timid little creature he’d known in London who took orders blindly from a callous fiancé, avoided confrontation with her outspoken and frivolous Aunt Vivienne, and who succumbed to the otherworldly charms of a vampire. The cold reality of the life he had forced upon her—the dark gift, he called it—had sharpened her edges. She no longer needed others to pave her way. Over the preceding decades she had become self-reliant to a fault, choosing her lovers instead of them choosing her, draining her victims without remorse and following no man’s orders. Yes, she might come to him of her own free will, but only to copulate, only when she was burning with the physical need which, like blood, gave her life meaning. She would writhe beneath his thrusting body, taking from him the raw animal power she knew she would never get from Stede Bonham, withholding from him the one thing he wanted above all else. Her love. That was her power over him, and she wielded it like a mighty sword.
“I may want you and need you, but I’ll never love you.”
In a bored tone, he said, “You have made that abundantly clear on more than one occasion.”
She turned to go. “When you’re finished with Papa, come to my room. I must speak to you about something important.”
Chapter 7
She sat at the vanity, running a hairbrush through her burnished locks, when there drifted into her nostrils not the rot and decay of what one would expect of the undead, but the sweet, alluring fragrance of the vampire. Looking up, she saw nothing in the mirror, not even her own reflection. How many times over the long decades had she gone to the mirror, hoping against hope of seeing something there—a light or a glimmer—something that would remind her of herself? Now, as she had done hundreds of times, she pushed herself away dejectedly and rose.
The muslin dressing gown she wore was lined only in the bodice, the rest sheer enough to show the outline of her legs in the moonlight slanting through the open window. In the glow of the candles the off-white color had an ever-so-slight tint of blue.
His gaze fell upon the small French knot buttons at each side of her bosom, the swell of heaving white flesh accentuated by the high waist and low-cut neckline. He licked his lips, and said from the shadows, “Why Prudence, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you invited me here with the intention of seducing me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said dryly.
He removed his frock coat and tossed it carelessly aside. Passing noiselessly from out of the shadows he sat down on an upholstered chair. The candlelight glimmered over the silken threads of his waistcoat and illuminated the green glow of his eyes. Crossing one leg over the other and placing his hands atop the inlaid arms of the chair, he said, “Of course not. Why would I do that? You’ll flatter me quite nicely when you come to me.”
She knew the picture she presented in her sheer dressing gown and felt a sense of triumph in the way his eyes raked over her. “Don’t be so sure of yourself.”
“But I have reason to be. Do you recall that time in London when I said you would come to me of your own free will,
and you did?”
The memory flashed through her mind despite the passage of more than seventy years. Her papa had been wasting away, victim of Lienore in the guise of Aunt Vivienne, and Nicolae, which was what he’d been calling himself back then, had claimed to be able to save him. All he had demanded in return was that she come to him of her own free will. And she had, partly in desperation to save her papa, partly because— She tried to block it from her mind, but his words from that night came back to taunt her—cold, hard, irrefutable. “You are here because you cannot deny what you feel. Just as I cannot deny what I am.” She hadn’t grasped the full extent of his meaning until he taught her things that night, shameful, scandalous things, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, revealed the terrible truth of what he was.
“I was different then,” she said defensively.
“Oh my, yes. You were so prim and proper. So, how shall I put it, unworldly. I, of course, was accustomed to women who were more experienced, but there was something about your virginal innocence that intrigued me. You were such an avid pupil. So hungry to learn all the little tricks and positions. Do you still enjoy doing it like the wolves?”
“You were a very good teacher,” she said. “Imagine how delighted my pirate will be by all I learned from you.”
That wiped the smile from his face in a hurry. It wasn’t just lovemaking tricks he’d taught her. She had also learned from him how to cut and slash down to the heart.
“You said you wanted to speak to me about something important. What is it? I don’t have all night. Well, actually, I do, but unless you’re going to spread your legs for me or tell me something of monumental importance, I have other places to be.”
Ignoring his biting sarcasm, she said, “Have you heard of a woman named Sabine Sejour?”