Love Bites UK (Mammoth Book Of Vampire Romance2)

by Telep, Trisha

  “What you want . . . would it do me lasting harm?” No story was worth that.

  “No,” she said. “Not if we put a finite measure on our affair. You will recover your energies when I stop feeding from you.”

  There, she admitted it. A thrill surged through him. Zane wished he’d had a digital recorder handy.

  “How long?”

  “Sixty days,” she answered. “I cannot take from you on a regular basis any longer than that without imperilling both your physical and mental health.”

  “So I’d end up like that guy at your club,” he noted. “Steven.”

  Ysabel shook her head. “He has an addictive personality. If I’d known—”

  “You wouldn’t have used him.”

  “Chosen,” she corrected.

  Zane curled his lip. “So you’re doing me great honour right now?”

  Though he wasn’t aware of her moving, she was suddenly much closer, close enough to touch. Her eyes caught his, and her scent swelled, going straight to his groin. “Does not it feel like one?”

  God, yes. It did. He shook his head to clear it of sexual urges.

  “The story. If I agree to this, you’ll answer all my questions fully?”

  “I will,” she promised. “Thus, the bargain is struck. Shall we seal it with a kiss?”

  Ysabel came up on her toes, and the taste of her went through him like white lightning. His head clouded. When he reached for her, he could no more have stopped that response than his own heartbeat. She felt unnaturally warm, as though she held fire enough to sear him to cinder and ash.

  What was worse – he didn’t care.

  She became manna from heaven, the elixir of life itself, and he needed more. With a low growl, he swung her into his arms, dimly surprised at some level that she permitted it. But there was no mistaking the hunger in her hands.

  His bedroom was dark, the sheets as rumpled as he’d recalled. Books and magazines lay scattered everywhere, a messy paper rug on the wood floor. For a moment, he felt ashamed to have her here, but she shook her head. “I will brook none of that between us, my chosen. There is no other I would have in your place this night, nor any palace that could offer more delight.”

  Chosen. The power of it rocked him. He’d never been chosen in his life. Everything he had, he’d earned or taken. Everything except Ysabel.

  He set her lightly on her feet and she pulled her dress over her head. She wore nothing beneath it. The moon gilded her in argent and ivory, caresses that flickered over her skin in hypnotic patterns. In response, fire licked through him, tinged with a madness born of aching desire. If she was a dream, he did not want to wake. His hands trembled as he stripped out of his jeans, and then he came down to her.

  Arms and legs tangled. They rolled, skin sweet and slick with yearning. Trembling, helpless, he thrust and found her hot, the loveliest thing he’d ever felt. He wanted her so that he couldn’t hear for his own heartbeat in his ears. Her mouth seemed to be everywhere, her hair spilling over his skin like silver flax, and yet he could not hold her. Infinite, racking waves tore through him, boundless, unbearable. He felt her teeth on his throat, or thought he did, but he was beyond caring. She took him.

  Eight

  Ysabel lay beside him, glowing with his essence. He was frighteningly still, but she hadn’t harmed him. It was rare for any chosen to surrender so completely the first time. Generally, such sharing only came after she laid the groundwork. She could not decide why he was so susceptible, though his claim she had never met anyone like him was valid.

  She did not want to leave him, but she must return to the club before dawn, if not for the reasons he believed. His chest rose and fell in seductive rhythm, making her want to hold her cheek against his bare skin and bask in simple human warmth. As if in response to her thought, his arms came around her, drawing her against him. At first she thought it was no more than sleepy reflex, and then she saw his fierce blue eyes.

  “Did you?” he whispered, fingers skimming his own throat. He winced when he found the sore spot.

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s it?”

  She arched a brow, quietly amused. “Did you want there to be more?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I guess I just expected there would be.”

  “You thought it would be worse.”

  “Yeah. I’ve seen the movies,” he added, defensive.

  Then she did laugh. He took no offence from it. Instead he nuzzled her throat. To her surprise, he still had the energy to pull her on top of him. She didn’t take from him again; instead it was pure pleasure that he gave. His slim, dexterous hands cradled her hips as she rode him. He lay beneath her, masterful in his submission, and she began to wonder in truth who would conquer whom.

  The days and nights passed in a sort of divine madness, but Ysabel retained enough presence of mind to blur his perceptions when they tarried together. Despite what she’d said about answering his questions, she didn’t intend to allow him any truth save that which she supplied. It amused her to see him struggle against her influence. No matter how many times they came together, he remained fuzzy on the details – and it must be that way.

  If the others knew the truth about her latest plaything, it would not end well for him. Of them all, Galen retained an awkward amount of noblesse oblige, and he would see it as his duty to rescue her from her own folly. Marceau would simply shake his head with weary resignation if he realized what she’d done. Sadly, it was not the first time, just her first lapse in a long while.

  But then, she’d always enjoyed playing with fire, and Zane burned with such a fierce light, she couldn’t help but want a little warmth to kindle the endless ages after he fell to dust. She could see the fragile flicker of him, here now, and as quickly gone, no more than a shimmer in comparison to her kind.

  Twenty-two of her self-allotted days with Zane had passed when Cyrus came knocking at her door. He’d fed recently, and that stolen energy sat on him like a nimbus, crowning his beauty with an incandescent glow. It was unusual for him to seek her out, but Ysabel made time for all the members of her camarilla, few that they were. Boston had not been kind to them, nor had the modern age. Without the glamour borrowed from writers of romantic fiction, they would have been hunted to extinction long since.

  “You look well.” She stepped back to let him enter her sitting room. “What brings you to me this night?”

  In answer, he prowled the room, seeming unable to settle. Such distress was unlike him. She watched him for a moment, and then caught his arm as he paced by.

  “Enough,” she said gently. “Speak. There are no secrets between us.”

  His jade gaze fastened on her face. “Is that still true? It once was.”

  Cyrus alone knew how close they’d come to destruction, some 200 years ago. He alone had extricated her from the fearful truth. She’d thought the memory might have faded, blurred by years of pleasure, but she could see the spectre riding him tonight.

  “It is still true,” she told him with grave dignity.

  “Then I must tell you – people whisper of your favour to this nobody, Ysabel. You seem besotted, as if he is the one who feeds from you. You shine when he comes to you. And I remember all too well the last time you displayed such marked affection.”

  Of course he would. The man had been his brother. Cyrus had killed him for her on 4 January, 1857. In return, she gave him what he craved most: immortality, a guarantee that his youth and beauty would never fade.

  “And you think Zane is another Pierce, one who will gain my trust and betray me.”

  “I fear that,” Cyrus admitted.

  “Fret yourself not. Only forty-eight days remain in our agreement, and I shall not grant him anything that could harm us during that time.”

  “Do you swear it?”

  Ysabel nodded and lifted her face. “Taste the truth of it for yourself.”

  Her kinsman took her lips in a sweet, lingering kiss. Though hi
s mouth was lovely and warm, it left her quiet and still inside. Not even an ember stirred within her in response to his beauty, and that left her shaken, for it was wholly wrong.

  “Dear God,” Cyrus breathed. “You’ve mated to him.”

  Nine

  Zane had no words to explain what was happening to him.

  Over the past two months, he only lived when he was with her. Sure, he put in his time at Weird Weekly News, shopped for basic groceries and paid his bills, but it was work, all of it. Much as he didn’t trust the sensation, he only felt alive with Ysabel.

  That meant their affair couldn’t be over too soon. He didn’t know if he could hold out any longer than that against her allure, and he didn’t want to end up like that guy, Steven. He didn’t want to spend his remaining days pining for the sight of her, begging for scraps of her time. Zane couldn’t imagine anything more pathetic.

  No, when the agreed time period ended, they were done, and he was going to write a story that would make him famous. Probably not in any reputable way, but he’d long since given up on the dim dream of being the next Woodward. He’d settle for being the next Whitley Strieber.

  Oddly, certain things didn’t add up. Apart from the puncture wounds on his neck, there was never any blood on the sheets. Either she was the neatest neck nibbler ever born, or he didn’t have the big picture yet. Still, maybe he was a victim of cinematic hyperbole. He’d give a lot to examine her teeth and see if they were hollow. Maybe she sunk them into his neck and took the blood straight through her fangs.

  But she slept too lightly for him to check her dental work. The minute he stirred beside her, she opened her eyes. And once her gaze met his, he forgot all about his personal agenda. Cliché as it might be, the sex was earth-shattering.

  Zane couldn’t doubt she was drawing his strength away. He’d lost ten pounds, weight he couldn’t afford to lose. In seven weeks with her, he’d gone from lean to thin. By the end, he would be gaunt and pale, visibly weakened.

  The prize would be worth it.

  He no longer needed a special knock or a pass code. Tonight he came via her private entrance. Night after night, he found her waiting when he finished his shift at the paper. It didn’t seem to matter what time; she was content to take what he offered, and that seemed wrong. After all, Ysabel could rule the world with her smile.

  Oh God, he had it bad.

  A thrill tightened his belly when he came up the stairs and she opened her arms. Though he’d wanted to ask some questions tonight, he couldn’t keep himself from her. He hardened as if in response to a silent command. For the first time, he could not wait for niceties; he could not wait for her to remove her clothes in languorous seduction. Zane had to have her or die.

  He took her hard and fast against the sitting room wall. If she fed from him, he missed it in the blaze of wild rapture. Afterwards, he gasped into the curve of her throat, rubbing his mouth against her tender skin. “What’s happening to me?” he breathed. “You promised me no harm, Ysabel. You swore it.”

  “You will take no lasting damage.” But she sounded shaken. “Rarely such a bond forms, but time will wear it thin. In a year and a day, you will no longer recall my face.”

  Right now, Zane couldn’t imagine anything closer to pure torment. “I don’t want that,” he protested, before he could recall the words that gave too much. “But . . . I don’t want this, either.” This helpless compulsion, falling upon her like an animal bereft of higher thought, terrified him. He didn’t want to lose himself in her.

  With some effort he straightened his clothing, but he couldn’t make himself let go. All too easily, he could understand how Steven had turned into a pitiful shell of a man. Though he suspected he might be following in the other’s footsteps, he couldn’t open his arms and go. Instead he carried her to a chair, where she curled into him like a flower seeking the sun.

  “Your thoughts are well-ordered tonight,” she said, a note of surprise accenting the mysterious lilt of her voice.

  She was right. There was no fuzzy euphoria clouding his mind, nothing to keep him from asking her anything he might wish. “Good thing,” he muttered. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to leave me a brain to interview you with.”

  Ysabel tucked her head against his shoulder. “Ask. I will answer.”

  “Do you mind if I record?” Taking her silence for acquiescence, he stifled his excitement at moving forwards. “I guess we should start with the basics. How old are you?”

  “I have lived some five centuries.”

  That gave him pause. He was holding a woman who had been alive when Queen Elizabeth I was born, a woman who pre-dated Shakespeare. He’d touched her, kissed her. There was something awful – unnatural – about that.

  Steeling himself, Zane went on. “Where were you born?”

  “Looe.” He didn’t recognize the name, so he regarded her blankly until she added softly, “Cornwall. The world was different, then.”

  “How did you . . . ” He hesitated, unsure how to ask.

  “You wish to hear the story of my change.”

  Ten

  Ysabel did not want to recall, much less share the callow young girl she had been. But she had said to him: Ask, I will answer. Such words had power when granted to a chosen. She could not deny him.

  “Even in those days, Looe was old,” she said then. “Once, William the Conqueror held Pendrym Manor. I came long after, born to a distaff branch of the Bodgrugan family. I was the youngest.” She went silent, trying not to reckon how many years it had been since she’d even thought of them, so long gone. “My mother died in childbed, and I had seven older sisters. My father made a pet of me.”

  She felt him nod to show he was listening, so she continued in a bloodless monotone. “One by one, I saw them marry. Men and childbirth stole their youth, their joy, and for some of them, their very lives. I feared it as I feared nothing else.”

  “Marriage?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  “You cannot imagine what it was like,” Ysabel said sharply. “A woman expected no more than to live to see her third decade – and by then, she would be a crone.”

  “You were vain.”

  She did not deny it, for she had been. Fertile ground for a chary tempter.

  “I begged my father to let me stay in his house. He would need me in his old age, I said. As I have already noted, he cosseted me; thus, he agreed. I avoided my sisters’ fate, the constant swiving and breeding that would steal my youth and beauty. Then one night, a traveller stumbled to our door, blown by fierce winds and rain. There was naught natural in it. But he was passing fair and spoke with a minstrel’s tongue. My father bade me, ‘Unbar the door, daughter. Let us see what gift the foul weather has brought us.’”

  A shiver rolled through her even now. In her mind’s eye, she could still see the man who had changed her. “He was pale, pale as moonlight with eyes like silver fog. He had a smile like a knife, and a wit that kept my father laughing long into the night. He invited the bard to stay.”

  “And thus did you take the viper to your bosom.”

  Ysabel had to shake her head. “For weeks, he entertained my father with his stories. By night, after my sire had dozed into his cups, this stranger whispered to me of places he should show me, marvels I might never see unless I gave him leave to tear the veil from my eyes.” She laughed softly, bitterly. “I thought myself wise in the ways of men. I thought it some double entendre. By then, the role of the ingénue had palled. I thought myself ready to play the seductress instead. I thought myself worldly. There was nothing he could do that would surprise me. I had seen the servants grunting in the back hallways.”

  “But he didn’t want you for sex.”

  “Not entirely,” she said, low. “There was that at first, and he was fearsome good. I loved him. Until he changed me, and left me with this hunger.”

  “Did it hurt?” he asked.

  At first she didn’t know whether he meant the loss of her virt
ue or the transformation. Either way, she answered the same. “Yes. And so I left my father’s house.”

  “You went away with him.”

  She inclined her head. “Indeed. He had such wonders to show me, after all.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  Ysabel considered for a moment. No one had ever asked her such a question before. “Yes and no. I have lived such a fearful span and, in that time, I have seen true miracles. But there is something wrong in it. I cannot survive without my chosen, and I miss the freedom of being beholden to no one.”

  “Last question for now,” he said, as if she had given him a great deal to consider. “What happened to him?”

  “He perished.” Her stark tone gave nothing away regarding the old one’s fate. She would never answer more.

  His breathing deepened then, and she realized how tightly he’d leashed himself to focus on the questions instead of her body in his arms. Ysabel shifted on his lap, aware of his growing arousal.

  “I lied,” he breathed. “I must know one thing more.”

  “Ask.”

  “How does this work? How is it that I cannot be sated with you?”

  Once, she would have called it magic. Now, science had supplied the answer. “I exude pheromones,” she told him gently. “They stimulate the production of oxytocin, which increases pleasure, sexual stimulation, trust and reduces your fear.”

  “Which makes it easier for you to feed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then do it. I want you again. I need—” Words failed him, but he raised his hips, rocking against her.

  “You needn’t feed me to have me,” she murmured, warmth glowing through her.

  One hunger was sated, but another blazed in her like an inferno. She lifted her skirt, and he unfastened his jeans. In one motion, he took her. Undulating her hips, she watched his face. She had never known anyone to respond as he did. Though he appeared tough and cynical, when she touched him, he gave everything.

  “Yes,” he whispered, lips parted. “Take everything.”