Looking down into his eyes, she brushed a silken length of hair back from his face and slid her palm to his rough cheek. “If that creature had succeeded in tearing more of your cloak, then you would have died as horribly as he said. You would have burned to death?”
He pressed his cheek tighter to her palm, slowly, almost reverently. His mouth was grim, and the intensity of his gaze burned like fire. “If it had been full day instead of evening, and if the exposure had lasted longer than the few minutes, then yes, it could happen. But the likelihood of the slayer gaining that much advantage over me in a fight is slim. Slayers like to instil fear, make their opponents doubt themselves.”
“Then he was a fool as well. Even a blind man can see you’ve no need to question yourself.” She pulled her hand back, but he caught her fingers in his and settled his gaze intently on hers.
“But I do doubt, Christine. Every time I have thought of you, every time I have seen you, I’ve doubted myself. And now that I have met you, I doubt myself even more. My honour tells me to stay away from you while everything else within me demands . . . other things.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers.
Lightning. That was the only way to describe the fire that flashed through her blood. Her mouth went dry and her pulse thundered.
“Other things,” she whispered, her gaze dropping to watch his lips close over her fingertips. Her inner fire burned hotter. “Like a kiss?”
“To begin with. Yes.” He urged her closer to him. As big as he was, sitting in the chair put him just a little more than a head shorter than her. “Do you want to kiss me, Christine?”
“Yes.”
“Then kiss me, angel.”
She knew another door was opening in her world. A change for ever. She was sure her heart would beat its way through her chest as she leaned down to set her lips on his. Warm and full and soft, his mouth was all that she ever imagined and more. His lips opened and pressed firmly to hers. It was magical. He was wondrous. The sweet brandy on his breath and the sandalwood of his scent washed over her senses, making her sigh. She could have stayed just like that forever, but reluctantly pulled back after a few moments.
“Perfect,” he rasped. “An angel’s kiss. So pure.”
“There are different kinds of kisses?”
His gaze slid from her face down her body and back up, leaving a path as heated as the hearth fire. “Many kinds of kisses, many places to kiss.”
Her fingertips still burned where he had kissed them. “Show me. Show me a warrior’s kiss, Aerick.”
He studied her for a long moment, as if drinking in every nuance of her. “I don’t know that I dare. Every moment we spend together drives us closer to a point of no return – that irrevocable moment in time when everything changes for ever. But in truth, if I was going to leave before that point, I would have done so already. I am weak.” He stood. “So, you would know a warrior’s kiss then?”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at him and meeting the dark hunger in his gaze head on. “I would know your kisses. All of them.”
“God help me,” Aerick whispered as he cupped her face in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers. His kiss began as hers, the firm press of warm lips. But the power of his kiss was intensified by the heat of his body and the feel of his hands upon her neck. The fire inside her flamed hotter and grew with each pounding beat of her heart.
His tongue brushed over her bottom lip once, then again and again, delving deeper into her mouth with each stroke, as if after having a small taste, he needed more and more.
She pressed closer to him, bringing her breasts to his chest and sliding her fingers into the dark silk of his hair. Suddenly everything changed in a heartbeat, as if her reaction to him loosened his invisible restraints. He growled deep in his throat and his tongue delved into her mouth, finding her tongue as she met him in a battling play of thrusts and parries. His hands left her throat and slid downwards. One hand covered her breast as the other went to her back, holding her firmly to him.
His hard-muscled thigh slid between her legs as he leaned her back over his arm. Unbelievable pleasure filled her. The pressure and heat of him against her intimate flesh, the rubbing caress of his palm over her nipple, the path of his kiss and questing tongue as he moved from her lips down her neck, and then back to her mouth to start the kiss all over again. He kept kissing her until she grew fevered, desperate. Her breaths became ragged and her body cried for more. She clutched his shoulders, arching to him. “Help! I am drowning in pleasure but can’t seem to get enough,” she whispered between gasps.
“Nor I, angel, nor I,” Aerick said, his body trembling against hers, his breaths rasping harshly. He pressed his forehead to hers and his hair softly caressed her cheeks and chest. “That is why we must stop and I must leave here. I fear the hunger I have for you has no end. I could strip you bare and kiss you everywhere for ever and not quench my need.” He eased back from her and she tightened her grip upon his shoulders. “Perhaps the storm has eased and I can see you home before it’s too late.”
Christine felt as if Aerick was suddenly closing a door he’d opened and she was about to lose something essential to her heart and her life. Did he mean to leave here? Did he mean this room, or did he mean Castleborough? Did she really want him to go and leave her untouched now that she’d finally found him? Did she want to leave this moment without knowing more of this incredible pleasure?
No.
He set her back on her feet and stepped away from her.
She bit her lip and he groaned, turning to face the fire with his fists clenched. After he drew a deep breath, he went right to the brandy and drank deep, his bandaged back to her.
Right or wrong, Christine didn’t want this to end. Not yet. I could strip you bare and kiss you everywhere for ever and not quench my need.
She reached for the buttons on her blue muslin dress and undid them quickly, discarding all notions of propriety beneath the surging tide of desire. She’d never believed she’d actually be able to love this man and she wasn’t sure she’d ever have this chance again. Her dress fell to a puddle at her feet and she slipped off her shoes then loosened the drawstring of her chemise. Aerick turned and froze, the decanter halfway to his mouth.
She didn’t say anything yet, but slid her chemise up on her left hip, then her right, to untie her pantalettes and let them slide down her legs. She’d not worn a corset, and now stood before him in her chemise and stockings, feeling as if she’d just bared her very soul to him. “If I had lived during your time, Aerick, I would have loved you, even if only from afar. Now that you are near, how can I not share with you all there is to know of love?”
Chapter Three
In all of his years of battle, in all of his experiences during a life long-lived, Aerick had never come apart at the very seams of his soul before. Not until he looked up and saw her undressing for him, her fingers trembling and her gaze unsure, despite her valiant spirit. But it was her words and her question that went to the very centre of his heart. He still could not bring her into the dark bleakness of his life for ever, but could he love her as much as possible at this moment? She’d reached beyond all barriers of her life for him. How could he not?
He set the brandy down with a thud on the table and crossed the room to sweep her into his arms. He laid her on the warm fur facing the fire. Claiming her lips, he kissed her thoroughly again, drinking in the sweetness of her mouth before kissing his way down her throat. He could feel the racing beat of her heart and smell the heady scent of her blood pounding beneath his lips. His mouth watered and his fangs ached to make her his for ever.
The blood rushing through his veins sang her name to every part of him, making him throb with a consuming hunger so great that he trembled from holding himself in check. Any discomfort from the burns was negligible compared to the fire in his loins. He seemed like a beast out of control, for nothing would do but to keep a rocking pressure against anything Christine.
&n
bsp; Pulling her chemise down to expose her breasts to his questing tongue, he cupped them in his hands and lavished each rosy nipple to a hard peak. He tasted and sucked and moulded and tweaked until she thrashed, her skin glowing from the heat of her desire. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted her bare to his every lick, his every kiss. Kneeling at her side, he pulled her chemise down over her hips and tossed it. Then he untied her garters and slipped her stockings off her long, shapely legs until she lay nude before him, a picture of well-loved feminine perfection – red hair splayed wildly about her on the white fur, the firelight gleaming off her ivory skin, her blue eyes smoky, her mouth swollen and needy for his, her body flushed and ripe with the first bloom of passion. He would never forget this moment. He drew in a deep breath, savouring the scent of her arousal, a perfume of desire made just for him.
“Aerick?”
“Just admiring perfection. Seeing you like this is like looking at the glory of a fiery sun.” Leaning down, he brought her foot to his lips and kissed her instep before moving to her ankle and lifting her leg higher.
“What are you doing?” she gasped and rose to her elbows.
“Exactly what I said, kissing you everywhere,” he murmured, watching the tantalizing sway of her breasts. He licked his way up to her knee and then treated her other leg to the same kisses. Still angled up on her elbows, she watched him with her eyes wide with wonder. “You’re beautiful, my love. More than I could dream possible.”
“Aerick!” She tensed as if momentarily frightened when he touched her there with his mouth, then cried out in pleasure. He watched his angel come apart, a total slave to the pleasure overtaking her body. She fell back upon the fur, her back arched, and her breasts shook with every shuddering breath and every moaning cry. She screamed his name and convulsed against him.
He thought he would stop then, he thought he could stop then, but he couldn’t. Being with her broke him, tore apart every notion of discipline he’d ever had as a warrior. His body shuddered so hard with his need to be inside her that he could no longer hold up his own weight. He freed himself from his trousers.
He expected her to tighten and fear the frenzy of his passion, but she didn’t. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, rocking her body to meet his need. After years of celibacy, his orgasm slammed into him with such force and such pleasure that his vision faded to black for a moment. He hadn’t even needed the taste of blood upon his tongue to reach his pleasure. Rolling to his side, he pulled her with him and collapsed in sheer wonder at the woman in his arms and what had just happened to him.
Christine looked into Aerick’s dazed eyes, and brushed her fingers over his lips, touching the tip of his fangs lightly. He was breathing heavily, his body still shuddering from what she now knew had to be heaven upon earth. Pleasure still sang inside of her, brought to an even greater height because she knew that Aerick had experienced the same. What would happen next? She didn’t know. It didn’t necessarily matter because she belonged to him heart, body and soul. This love had been growing inside her for years, just waiting for him. She would follow him wherever he would go. “Why didn’t you take me as a man would a woman?”
He pulled her close and kissed her softly then sighed. “Your virginity and my honour are still intact. As much as I would like to keep you with me for ever, I can’t. Once the storm passes, I will see you back home. Then once I know the slayer Ghenghis is dead and you’re safe, I will leave Castleborough.”
Christine reared back in a mixture of shock and confusion. In the span of a breath, heaven shattered at her feet. Her insides trembled at the resolve in his green eyes. “What do you mean?”
“The slayer vowed to see you in hell. I’ll die before that happens. You’ll be safe. I’ll gather the Blood Defenders and we’ll hunt Ghenghis down.”
Feeling too bare and vulnerable, she pulled from Aerick’s embrace and pulled her chemise over her head. “At the moment the slayer doesn’t concern me at all. What concerns me is what else you said.” She blinked back the tears that threatened. “Why can’t I be ‘with’ you? And how could you possibly even consider that you’ll ‘see me back home’ and ‘leave Castleborough’, and that would be the end of everything we just shared?”
“Damn.” Sitting up, he raked his hands through his hair and scrubbed his eyes, before facing her with a bleak expression. “What other outcome did you expect, angel? To stop now will save us both from greater pain in the future. The point of no return will only become sharper and more deadly the closer we become. I’ll never condemn you to the darkness of my life, especially with my race in jeopardy of extinction. What honourable man or vampire would? And how long do you think we can share a passion as great as ours without me taking your virginity or your blood? You ask too much of me. My weakness for you is too great. Just look at what happened tonight within the mere two hours.”
“Am I a woman of sound mind, Aerick?”
“Of course,” he said, brow knotting with confusion.
“I am intelligent and capable.”
“Extremely.”
“Then I don’t need you to make my decisions for me. I should be the one to decide for myself whether or not I want to share a future with you in your world or remain alone in mine.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t allow that,” he said. Clearly agitated, he rose, pulled on his pants and marched over to the brandy decanter, then drank several gulps. “I’ve lived a great deal longer than you have, and I am much more aware of the sacrifices and dangers than you are. With knowledge comes responsibility. I can’t conscience it. None of the Blood Defenders have women with them because almost all vampires with mates have gone to live within the protection of darkasylums, safe from slayers.”
Christine didn’t say a word, but rose and dressed herself. She wasn’t going to beg to be loved, for if he loved her as she loved him, then all of his reasonings wouldn’t matter in the end. Her fingers shook and her heart thudded with as much pain as it had raced with joy and excitement. She knew he watched her, expected her to agree with him. She refused to look at him. “I am ready,” she said, slipping her cloak on. “It would be best for me to return home alone.” She kept her gaze away from his eyes.
He’d put on his heavy cloak and his sword. “I will see you home, but none will see me.”
She lifted her gaze then, meeting his for a brief moment before turning towards the door. “There’s no need, Aerick. It would be better for me to cut things off here than to do so moments before having to walk back into the prison of my life.”
“Damn it, Christine,” he said. He crossed the room, caught her shoulders and turned her to face him. “Don’t you understand that is exactly what I am trying to keep you from? A dark prison. Only this one goes on through eternity.”
She shook her head. “You’re making decisions for me. You don’t know anything about my life at all, what it’s like for me here . . . what I must face alone every day.” A flash of Lord Stafford’s lecherous gaze entered her mind and she shoved it aside. “But none of that is what really matters. It wouldn’t be any different for me if I were the queen of England. A life without love and passion to fill it is a dark prison, Aerick, and that’s most likely why you have no hope of a future. If all of the Blood Defenders see life as you do then it is no wonder you feel your race is doomed.”
She hoped for a spark of understanding to light the grim darkness in his eyes, but none came.
“You don’t understand. In my world it isn’t that simple.”
“No, it is you who doesn’t understand. Love is that simple.”
“Dear God, were it so,” Aerick said. His mouth fell passionately upon hers and he backed her up to the door kissing her so deeply that she felt him all the way to her soul again. By the time he ended the kiss Christine was back to the desperation of desire, needing to be satisfied at that moment or her heart would cease to beat. Aerick himself was breathing heavily.
He pulled away from her with a cry of anguish. “Let�
�s go.”
She followed him up the stairs and into the church vestibule, where she was surprised to hear the sound of men’s voices.
“If the chit don’t ’pear by morn, we’ll have to tell Lord Stafford the bloody wolf got her. For the life of me I’ve never heard such a bloodthirsty howl in me whole life.”
“I’d bet a new shilling that if she met up with the beast, she’d walk away without a scratch. That red hair is the devil’s own I tell you.”
Christine whispered in Aerick’s ear. “It’s Billy and Will Jenkins. They’re Lord Stafford’s stable hands and must be searching for me.”
“I can see they’re working hard.” The look in Aerick’s eyes could kill.
Christine laid a staying hand on his arm. “It’s all right. They’ll see me home. They’re just another part of my world.”
“They’ll wonder why you didn’t reveal yourself when they first arrived.”
“I’ll tell them I fell asleep.” She quickly searched the vestibule and pointed to a seat in a shadowed alcove across the room.
“I’ll be watching,” Aerick said and then fell back into the shadows.
Christine called out for the stable hands and all too soon she found herself riding back through the rain and chill wind and settled into her room at the Stafford Estates. Lady Stafford was quite put out that Christine had not made it back home before the storm and had thus ruined the quiet evening. Lord Stafford kept looking at her to the point that Christine pulled her sodden hood back up and pretended to be so cold that she shook droplets of water everywhere until Lady Stafford dismissed her for the evening.
After cleaning herself at the washstand and warming up with as much towel rubbing as her skin could stand, she climbed into her cot exhausted, but was unable to fall asleep. As she drifted in and out of consciousness, she relived every moment spent with Aerick. Sometimes she felt as if she could even smell him, as if he were lying next to her in the night. She felt him so strongly that she called out his name and reached out, only to wake alone and cold. She realized that it would always be so. All she would ever have of love were the stolen moments she’d shared with him. She didn’t know how it would ever be enough. Tears fell then as it seemed her heart broke open and grieved, aching for the man she’d loved for so long, yet only known for a moment in time.
Love Bites UK (Mammoth Book Of Vampire Romance2) Page 49