“Mon coeur,” he said, grinning crookedly. In the light of a single candle, he looked monstrous, indeed a creature out of her dreams. “Rush to my arms and we shall make sweet love until the dawn.”
“Bed.”
His teeth flashed. “I love your practical nature.”
Lucilla closed her eyes, dimly aware of movement and small noises. She must have drifted off again, for her next awareness was of her legs awkwardly bumping Pascal’s as he arranged himself comfortably next to her. He wasn’t naked, which disappointed her. Then he kissed the corner of her mouth and curled his fingers firmly over her breast, and she didn’t mind so much anymore. If she’d had the energy to lift her head, she would have kissed him. She drew in a deep breath and as she let it out, subsided back into sleep.
She woke in time for her shift, before realizing she was off duty for the next twenty-four hours. Sleepily, she cursed until she remembered Pascal had come. She rolled her head to one side and saw his tall form bent, shirtless, over her washstand, attempting to shave in a tiny mirror. She lay still and watched his intent expression, so like when he was focused on her; then her gaze wandered down his shoulders to the sleek muscles of his back until she reached the high waist of his uniform trousers. The cut of them did little for his long legs.
She was still angry with him for not sharing his work with her, but the anger had dulled over time as she contemplated the fact that he had no real reason to trust her with his secrets, other than their physical bond. She might wish it to be otherwise, but wishing brought nothing. In the meantime, he was here, and she was already lonely for his touch.
“Come here,” she said once he’d put down his rinsed razor. “Did you come here to see me, or is there news of some kind?”
“The news can wait a little longer,” he said. He knelt next to the bed and kissed her, tasting strongly of tooth powder.
“I have news for you, also. It can wait for me to brush my teeth, and for us to fuck,” Lucilla said, savoring the word anew, the word she could speak to no one else. She liked the sound of it so much that she considered saying it again, and again, and again, as she pressed her hot skin to his and forced away the bad news she would soon have to share.
“Hurry with the first, so we may be slow with the second,” Pascal said, grinning into her eyes.
Lucilla brushed her teeth in the nude, her feet growing icy against the floor as she watched Pascal shuck off his drawers. His legs were long and strong and cleanly muscled, his skin dense with soft hair. His cock thickened and rose as she watched; after she’d rinsed her mouth, she grasped it firmly between her thumb and forefinger.
Pascal steadied himself with a hot hand on her shoulder. He kissed her neck and made humming sounds as she delicately touched the head of his cock and slid his velvety-soft foreskin over the firm flesh within. She laid her free hand on his chest, rubbing her palm against hair. “I want you inside me as soon as possible,” she said.
“How?” he asked, pressing his lips behind her ear and sucking gently.
“Every way,” she said, closing her eyes and tipping her forehead into his. She stroked his cock languidly and looped her other arm around his neck. His palm cupped her cheek and his mouth met hers, sucking her breath into his own lungs as if he couldn’t live without it. She kissed his throat, caressing her own lips with his stubbled roughness, and remembered Ashby’s skin beneath her lips and teeth. Sudden, sharp grief stabbed her, that Ashby would never feel such a thing again, so she kissed Pascal with desperate fervor, her fingers sifting through his hair, trying to find a grip. She released his cock and used those fingers to dig into his sharp hipbone, dragging him closer, trapping his erection between them, all the while kissing him and kissing him, afraid to stop.
Soon merely kissing wasn’t enough. She dragged him toward her bed, stumbling over discarded boots and gasping as his fingers slid from her rear down between her legs, the tip of one long finger piercing her with sharp ecstasy.
“Turn around,” Pascal breathed hotly in her ear. “Turn around and I will fill you so deeply our very souls will touch.”
She fell toward the bed and caught herself on her hands, drawing her legs up behind her. She could easily feel the wooden slats with her knees, even through the thin mattress; she grabbed more blanket and wedged it beneath herself, for padding. “This will never work. You’re far too tall.”
“I am clever,” he reminded her. He applied a condom and crawled onto the bed behind her, fitting himself to her back. “Also, I have great motivation. Here, sit up on your knees and lean back into me—”
His rigid cock thumped against her back, hot and smooth. He grasped her waist and lifted her, just enough to wedge his cock at the entrance to her sex. She reached and helped to guide him inside her as he eased her down, both of them breathless from the new sensations. And at last, she was too full of pleasure to think any longer.
“Hold still,” Pascal murmured into her ear. He wrapped his arms snugly around her waist and curled himself over her shoulders, until there was scarcely any air between them. His heartbeat reverberated through her chest as well as his own.
“Tighter,” she said. His arms tightened, and she layered her arms atop his. She swore she could feel his pulse beating inside her sex. She tightened her inner muscles on his cock and felt his groan throughout her body.
“Perhaps you’ve held still long enough,” he said, loosening his arms and rearranging his hands on her hips.
Lucilla knelt up, tugging herself off his cock fraction by fraction. Pascal’s ragged breathing and the pressure of his hands cued her when to slide back onto him, and soon they’d established a rhythm that kept them both hovering on an invisible edge, at least until her memory of reality began to intrude. She eased onto her hands and knees and said, “Please, Pascal. Faster now. Deep as you can.”
He braced one hand on the bed and placed the other so each jerk of his hips rubbed her clitoris hard against the heel of his hand, sharp stabs that quickly drove her to a peak. She came gasping, then rode out Pascal’s last few thrusts in a blissful daze.
Afterward, they lay in a tangled heap, Pascal’s shins dangling off the side of the bed but his arms firmly holding her to his chest. He said drowsily, “Did you hear that Antwerp has been lost?”
“Yes.”
“Madame Claes is missing. She is stronger than a human, and quite capable, but I fear she may have attempted something unwise because of Antwerp’s fall.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I had hoped your British werewolf might be of help in locating her.”
Lucilla closed her eyes. “My brother came to see me. He said that Captain Ashby was killed.”
Pascal stiffened and cursed softly in French. “Bad luck. Very bad luck.”
“That both should go missing at the same time…” She looked at him over her shoulder. “Crispin said they weren’t able to find Ashby’s body.”
Thoughtfully, Pascal said, “There’s no proof, then, that he’s dead. Do you know where he was last seen?”
She shook her head. “I can give you the date, as close as I can estimate it from what Crispin said.”
“And I can inquire of his regiment.” He quickly kissed the back of her neck, then sighed. “Madame Claes—all her hatred of the Boche centers on Herr Doktor Kauz, or perhaps it is the reverse. We had a general idea of his whereabouts. My men were investigating laboratories as best they could, in enemy territory. There is at least one location where we know Kauz is working, on a government grant, and one more remote site that is a possibility. She could easily have obtained the information. If Ashby went missing in the same general area as either, then it is possible Herr Doktor Kauz has captured them both.”
“You mean, Ashby might be alive.”
“It is possible. Kauz did not kill Madame Claes when she was his captive. I think they are more use to him alive.”
Lucilla stared into space. “If you can find them…” She laced her fingers with h
is. “We can’t reveal their secret. We must rescue them ourselves.”
“We?”
“We. I’ll help you.”
He said very quietly, “This could be a dangerous undertaking. Men with guns. Not like stealing a motorcar.”
“Every day, I see men who’ve been shot, stabbed, blown to pieces. Do you think I don’t know?”
Pascal drew a breath, then let it out. “I fear for you,” he said in a low voice.
“But you will accept my help.”
“Of course I will.” His arms tightened around her, almost painfully.
“Pascal—” She rubbed his forearm.
“Yes?”
“Are you a werewolf?”
He hesitated. “No.”
Lucilla could feel his heartbeat, and it had remained steady, though his breathing came a fraction faster. She asked, “Are you related to a werewolf?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I want to know.”
“Will it make a difference to you?”
“I…don’t think so.” She paused and thought about it. “I would like you to tell me, anyway.”
“Very well. My grand-oncle, Erard, he was a werewolf. But he had no children of his own. He could find no one to be his wife. And so I became his child, in a way, until he died.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“That my grand-oncle was a werewolf?”
“That he’s dead.” Lucilla turned in his arms and held on to him fiercely. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You had guessed already.”
“What’s important is that you told me.” She kissed his shoulder, then rubbed her nose against his skin.
“I trust that you will not share this secret.” Pascal smoothed his hand over her hair.
“I won’t,” she said.
He kissed her. “I have never told anyone else. Not even my father.”
16
NOT DEAD. THE PLACE HE OCCUPIED WAS PITCH-black and cold and silent. Noel had never quite believed in the afterlife described to him by Father Michael, since there were no wolves there, but he was also pretty sure that even hell did not include metal pressing against his face and the sensation of blood coagulating and drying on bare skin. He was bare all over, in fact, except for metal at his wrists, ankles, waist and throat, the latter extending over the lower half of his face, digging into the soft tissue beneath his jawbone and cutting into his lips. It was worse than being dead, because he had expected either death, injury or safety, not a combination of injury and continuing danger. Perhaps he should have.
The tang of iron in the steel, so much like blood, burned in his nose and throat, and he coughed. He would have spat if he’d been able to sit up, and if he hadn’t been muzzled. As he lay flat on his back, he had to swallow carefully or he would choke. He sniffed again, cautiously, trying to discern clues beneath the heavy reek of carbolic and ammonia. His nose flinched from the combined stink and grew numb.
Losing his sense of smell was like going blind. In the darkness, he was already blind, of course, but this was worse, and for a few moments he panicked, thrashing against his bonds, only ceasing when he realized he could smell his own fresh blood and scraped flesh.
All right. It’s all right. Just don’t breathe it in so deeply, you idiot. Concentrate.
Noel was not bound in any sort of German prison. He didn’t have to think about where he might be. His parents had told him horrible stories of werewolves who’d been captured by those who hoped to gain some advantage from it, such as being changed themselves, and no matter how one explained it was impossible to change a human into a werewolf, one would never be believed. Others had been caught by the self-righteous, who fought to rid the world of unholy beasts, or by those with personal grudges, true or not. His current bonds, his nakedness and his injuries all indicated his captor’s purpose wasn’t immediate death, but something more insidious.
He needed to know more about his captor’s plans. To do that, he had to remain calm. He tried picturing the fields and forests of home, but that only made him want to run. He settled for disassembling and assembling his Enfield rifle in his mind, then a Maxim gun, then a bicycle, then the motorbike he’d been working on in his mother’s garden shed.
A long, vague time later, he wondered if his captor’s purpose was to drive him insane. He heard only occasional, very distant rumbles—the impact of shells? Thunder? Someone banging on a wall?—and saw nothing. His nose periodically gave up the ghost, and bound as he was, he could touch nothing but the metal table on which he lay. His muscles ached from confinement, and his cut lip throbbed and burned with his pulse. How long had it been? An hour? Two? How long had he been here? Who had won the battle?
Something hissed steadily, like an engine releasing steam. The space echoed, and he’d become disoriented enough that he couldn’t tell how far away the sound was, or where it came from. He caught a scent and promptly gagged as a cloud of ether settled over his face. Eventually, he had to breathe, and despite his desperate thrashing, even his mental sight went dark.
A woman crouched before him, naked, her long blond hair trailing to the chalky stone floor. She had a round face with large eyes, a delicate snub nose and a cherubic pink mouth. “Wake up,” she said, slapping his cheek. The blow was not gentle.
“Christ, my head hurts.” The inside of his skull felt as if it had been burned, and the inside of his nose, as well.
“If you vomit again, I will make you wish you had never been born,” the woman said.
Again? Noel tensed his arm and realized he could move. He drew up his legs to guard his belly and cradled his throbbing head in his palms. “Fucking hell.”
“Yes,” she said, as if agreeing. She slid something across the floor to him. He smelled water. He squinted open one eye. The water was in a shallow bowl. The woman’s lip curled. “We are animals to him,” she said.
We? Pain tore through him as he moved, snaring her arm and bringing it close to his face. She flinched, then froze as he pressed his nose to her skin and inhaled, deeply, the unmistakable scent of werewolf. His smile hurt.
She snatched back her arm. “You have nothing to smile about, Englishman.”
Noel grinned. He had to squint, but he grinned. “I’m extremely pleased to meet you.”
“Soon, you will not be. Are you going to drink?”
“Are you going to help me up?”
The room was small, perhaps ten feet square, and looked as if it had been carved out of the rock, then poorly whitewashed with lime. It smelled overwhelmingly of carbolic. A dim bulb hung from a wire strung across the low ceiling; he followed the wire with his eyes and noticed it exited through a hole next to a reinforced wooden door, with its locks on the outside, of course.
Noel felt fractionally better after drinking his fill, though he would have been happy for a handful of aspirin, as well. He sat on the floor across the narrow cell from the woman, his back to cool white stone, and contemplated changing form, to see if that would help alleviate the pain. The woman was watching him narrowly, then her eyes flicked toward the door, and again to a corner near the ceiling. His eyes following hers, he saw a port in the door, currently closed, and what looked like another opening higher up. They were watched.
Well, it could hardly be a surprise to their observer, or observers, that he would be curious about his situation. “Where are we?” Her accent was either Belgian or Dutch, with the former more likely. He didn’t feel as if a long enough time had passed for him to reach Holland.
“I don’t know.” She rested her crossed arms on her updrawn knees, eyeing him through a thick swath of blond hair. Her scent tantalized him. He wanted to crawl across the floor and lay his head in her lap until he felt better, then he wanted to nuzzle her all over. It was too bad he couldn’t. First, he didn’t plan to let his wolf self dictate his actions. Second, she did not look as if she would be amenable to him getting any closer, though he didn’t sense any dislike of him personally. Perhaps sh
e felt a generalized wariness. In the circumstances, it was completely warranted. She was imprisoned, and not only imprisoned, but trapped with a man whom she’d never before met.
“How long have you been here?”
“Several days. I was wise and did not fight as you did.”
“I find that difficult to believe.”
“This is not the first time for me.” The tightness in her voice made the hair raise on his arms; had he been in wolf form, his hackles would have flared. If she was afraid, her fear was well submerged beneath several layers of rage.
“Will you enlighten me on what’s to happen to us?”
Her lip rose in a snarl, then she visibly calmed herself to a level of quivering tension that Noel recognized from soldiers who’d been in action about an hour past good judgment. “We are experimental subjects.”
“Whose experiments?”
“Kauz,” she said, almost spitting the name.
“German? Austrian?”
“German.”
“Doubly my enemy, then.” Noel rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen his cramped muscles. He would need not only to protect himself and the woman, but also prevent the German from gaining any information useful to the war effort.
The woman eyed him without blinking for a long time. At last, she said, “We could rip out each other’s throats. It would not take so very long.”
Noel caught her gaze with his own. “I’m Noel Ashby,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Tanneken Claes,” she said. “You are pretending there is a better way.”
“We can escape. You escaped before.”
“Are you willing to tear out the throat of a feeble old man?” she said, her voice dripping with irony.
“It needn’t come to that. I’m lacking my uniform just now, but I’m a professional soldier in His Majesty’s army.”
“I am hardly a weakling,” she snarled.
“That’s unlikely, given you’re a werewolf. But you were alone that other time, of course you had difficulty escaping. Now you’re not alone. It’s much easier to escape with two.”
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