by Olivia Waite
He laughed and mimed a shudder. “Anything but that,” he said. With one last bow—oh, what a lovely motion!—he strode away through the unseeing crowd. Her racing heartbeat and a dark memory on her lips were the only indications she hadn’t imagined the whole thing. How irritating, she thought.
She didn’t have time to think anything else, as right at that moment her mother arrived. “Virginia!” said Mrs. Greening, curling one firm hand around her daughter’s upper arm. “I was wondering where you’d disappeared to. Were you dancing with someone?”
There was no way to answer that question. “I was listening to the music,” Virginia said, which was at least partially true.
Mrs. Greening tutted and steered her daughter toward the grand ballroom entrance. “As though music had anything to do with what’s important at a ball. Your father and I have been looking for you this age—I hope you’re ready to leave.”
“Quite,” said Virginia. The incubus had been diverting—and in certain respects very educational. Now that he was gone this evening seemed even duller than before. Was this what her life had come to? Round after round of perpetual boredom? Waiting out the clock until she could escape with nothing to show for the waste of time?
They collected Colonel Greening—who was looking very red about the face, which told Virginia he’d found the quality of the host’s brandy up to snuff—and the footmen brought round their carriage. Soon the whole equipage was trundling homeward through the night to the accompaniment of well-shod hoofbeats.
Mrs. Greening broke the silence in an all-too-casual manner. “I was having a marvelous conversation with Lady Braddick earlier tonight—”
“Don’t bother,” Virginia interrupted with a sigh. “Her nephew is neither as rich nor as handsome as she claims.”
“But still very eligible,” Mrs. Greening insisted.
Virginia shook her head. “He has less intelligence than his mother’s pug. Less hair too.”
“And he’s the most easy-going man in all of England,” her mother pressed on. “You could do much worse in a husband—he’d do anything you wanted if you just gave him a bit of attention and a few smiles. You could wind him right around your finger.”
“I don’t want to wind a man around my finger,” Virginia insisted, even as she harbored a traitorous whisper of thought. Maybe one man...
Not a man, she reminded herself. A demon.
“Well,” said Mrs. Greening in her sternest tones, “if what you want is to end up alone and unloved, you’re going about it exactly right. What’s going to happen to you when your father and I are gone?”
“Eh?” said Colonel Greening, who had been lightly dozing on the opposite seat.
“What if we were carried off tomorrow to our eternal rest?” Mrs. Greening went on with a quaver in her voice. “You’d be on your own in a great empty house, with no other family to look after you and no connections in this world to speak of!”
“Now Priscilla!” Colonel Greening objected, “you know the girl’s got her inheritance! And Lord and Lady Lambourne would surely keep an eye on her!”
Mrs. Greening sniffed. “Our Virginia has far too much pride to go begging to a man who left her at the altar—”
“We were never formally engaged,” Virginia said automatically.
“Who left her practically at the altar and married some nobody he met on the Continent while we all thought he was dead!”
Virginia was very tempted to see what would happen to her mother’s expression if she admitted that Lord Lambourne actually had been dead. And that his mysterious wife was a demoness he’d met while in Hell.
And that Virginia knew this for a fact because she’d been the one to bring his soul back to the mortal world.
But it wasn’t her secret to reveal—even if she did long to explain why she’d gone from her old, laughing self to this new, strange, quiet person.
Her mother tried to bring up Lady Braddick’s nephew again, but Colonel Greening interrupted her. “Our girl will find herself the right kind of man someday,” he grumbled. “Nothing wrong with being a little particular, if you ask me.”
“Particular!” Mrs. Greening exclaimed. “If I’d been so particular, I’d still be a Campfield!”
“Would you?” Colonel Greening asked, his tone wounded and his eyes distinctly puppyish.
His wife relented, patting his knee with an affectionate smile. “Of course not, dear.”
And that was the crux of the matter, Virginia thought. Her parents were quietly, earnestly in love with one another. She couldn’t imagine the circumstances of their courtship—there must have been one at some point—but nor could she imagine them ever wanting to separate for any appreciable length of time. They suited each other perfectly, and they only grew closer as the years took them further and further away from the hot blood and riotous passions of youth.
Virginia wanted the same thing for herself.
For a brief time she’d thought she might find it with Lord Lambourne, but it had fallen to pieces and taken all her hopes with it. Now she was looked at with pity, if she was looked at at all—unless Lord and Lady Lambourne themselves were present, in which case Virginia became the object of an intense and mortifying scrutiny.
If her choices were between obscurity and constant surveillance, she would take obscurity every time.
But she was frank enough to admit to herself that neither choice made her less lonely.
The carriage made a turn and Virginia caught sight of a brightly lit window, out of which came a laugh that split the night air like a bell. But then the horses pulled forward and the city streets seemed even darker and more muffled than before.
For a moment Virginia imagined she would pass through the rest of her life like this—in silence and cold, cut off from the world around her. It was a terrible, paralyzing thought.
At least she could ask for a fire to be lit in her room before she went to bed. It was no substitute for passion and affection, but it was all she was likely to find tonight.
She shied away from thinking any further into the future than that.
* * * * *
As the bells chimed midnight, James Grieve soared above the sleeping city.
He was able to fly in near silence, with only the occasional downbeat of his broad wings to punctuate long bouts of controlled gliding. He stayed over darkened houses as much as possible, avoiding the noise and crowds of the theater district and the lustier, firework-filled skies over Vauxhall. Not that mortals could detect him, even had there been a full moon to cast his form in silhouette. He was quite accomplished at being unseen when it suited him.
The memory of the clear brown eyes that had noticed him earlier hurried his flight and sharpened his hunger. As always he followed centuries of instinct and the peculiar talents of his race to locate the lady’s house.
And the lady’s window.
The window was locked, but locks were his old friends by now and this one clicked open as soon as his fingers touched it. In nearly no time he was lifting the sash and coming to rest inside the bedroom. His feet sank into a lush expanse of carpeting but his eyes were fixed on the sheer hangings of the tall and feather-filled bed.
In the very center of that bed, sheathed to her neck in virginal white, Miss Lakeland lay sleeping.
Her demoness was nowhere to be seen—no doubt she had other prey to pursue at the moment. James Grieve padded closer to the bed and pulled the translucent hangings back. He relaxed and took in a few deep breaths while he opened his infernal senses to the mind of the sleeping woman before him...
She was dreaming of Mr. Cave.
His haughty good looks were unmistakable, even in the blurred world of the dreamscape. It was a balcony much like any other, with columns and a railing that swam in and out of focus. Mr. Cave had gone down on one knee to declare his love in lavish style—and now he was kissing her, a kiss the sleeping Miss Lakeland no doubt thought lurid enough but which seemed rather tame by James’ standards.
It would be so easy to slip into this dream, to take up that image of Mr. Cave and show Miss Lakeland precisely what lurid truly meant. He really should, as he hadn’t fed in nearly six days now. Much longer and he risked being flung from the mortal plane and back to Hell to recuperate in flame and fever.
Miss Lakeland, in her dream, tilted her head back and gasped softly. James shuddered in response.
But he couldn’t make himself take that crucial step forward.
Only a very stupid and short-lived incubus made the mistake of thinking all women were the same. But up until tonight he’d thought all women were equally appealing.
Somehow, that was no longer the case.
He was perfectly physically capable of ignoring this strange discovery and seducing the dreaming Miss Lakeland, whom he’d been watching for some time now. She seemed quite ready for seduction. He could borrow Mr. Cave’s image and run his hands through her golden hair and along every slim and rounded part of her graceful body. He could bring her ecstasy the likes of which her mortal mind could barely imagine.
But the whole time he would know that it was a substitute.
The kiss he’d stolen from Miss Greening—that she’d let him steal, he knew—had not sated him. But it had been a new and fascinating pleasure to be kissed as himself, demon though he was.
And every time he imagined what he might do to pleasure Miss Lakeland, her image shifted in his head from blonde to brunette, and the shape of her graceful body altered to one less fashionably beautiful but with a powerful appeal all its own.
He didn’t want to be someone else’s dream tonight, even though he felt hollow inside from hunger. He wanted someone to see him and touch him as he was, not as they wished him to be. He wanted someone awake, with a clear gaze and a knowing smile...
James was not used to denying his own appetites. Especially when they were so strong.
He decided to find Miss Greening.
But before he left, he breathed a little life into the dream Mr. Cave, who began to do some very naughty things with his hands that Miss Lakeland evidently found delightful. And James smiled a little as he launched himself back out into the night.
His talents led him unerringly to Virginia Greening’s bedroom window. Unlike Miss Lakeland’s, hers was unlocked—but then, James already knew she was fearless in the face of sin.
He slipped inside and stopped in his tracks.
Miss Greening was not sleeping. She was not even in her bed. Instead, she was curled in an armchair before a roaring fire with a book in one hand, wearing a dressing gown of such vivid orange that she hurt his night-lulled eyes more than the flames did.
He didn’t think he’d moved, but he must have, because all at once she lifted her head from her book and fixed him with that clear, potent gaze of hers.
Chapter Two
For a moment Virginia thought she’d conjured him right off the page of her book.
It hadn’t taken her very long to find the section on incubi in the ancient grimoire that had guided her through Hell and back. There were a few interesting facts and some very enlightening—and regrettably diminutive—illustrations. Virginia had grown increasingly fascinated by the suggestive details of the hand-drawn figures in their lecherous poses. Some of them seemed quite physically improbable. Not that she was an expert, but still...
And now incubus James Grieve was standing in her bedroom, wings spread behind him in the flickering firelight. He was naked again—and again he had that predatory look about him. “What are you reading?” he asked.
Virginia closed the book so he wouldn’t see the pictures she’d been studying so closely. “I was reading about incubi, of course. It helps to know one’s adversary.”
“Are we adversaries?” he asked.
The mildness of his disappointment irked her. “We are certainly not friends—or do you attempt to seduce all your friends, Mr. Grieve?” she asked.
“I attempt to seduce everyone, Miss Greening,” the incubus replied. “That would include friends, if I had ever found any.” Broad green shoulders lifted in a careless shrug.
Virginia cocked her head at him. “Perhaps you would have found some if you could have reined in your appetites once in a while.”
He grinned and Virginia’s heart leapt in her chest. “But I am made to be all appetite, Miss Greening. If my friendlessness troubles you, you might claim the title yourself—I would consider your friendship a great honor.” He swept her a winged bow, all smooth grace and rippling musculature.
Good heavens—she’d been warm enough sitting before the fire, but in Mr. Grieve’s presence the air in the room felt searingly hot. She tucked the grimoire beneath the cushion of the chair—its usual hiding place, where none of the maids would notice it— and stood to face him. “I learned quite a bit about you this evening,” she said. Wariness crept over him, though the change in his expression was subtle. “You feed on us—on our lusts and desires. The book compared it to the way we humans feed on sheep or pigs or cattle.”
He shook his head and began to move toward her.
Virginia held up her hand and he stopped. She went on speaking. “And I thought about that. I thought about how you’ll be pulled back to Hell if you don’t manage to seduce one of us. And then I thought about what would happen to me if I stayed in this one small room for the rest of my life and never went out, never talked to anyone else, never stood in the middle of a crowd, never reached out a hand to another person even as a formality.” She shook her head at the prospect and said, “I’d die. Not all at once— in pieces, perhaps, or just a long slow decline until one day I breathed out and failed to breathe in again.” She breathed in now, a bit unsteadily. “Your needs aren’t that different from mine. Mine simply take longer to destroy me if they aren’t fulfilled.”
He stepped quickly forward again, so near that Virginia’s courage momentarily faltered. She tried to step back, only to be stopped when the backs of her thighs bumped up against the arm of her overstuffed chair. She put her hands there, suddenly desperate to feel something solid and familiar in a world that had started to spin on its axis. The incubus leaned in close, his voice a rumble that curled around the base of her spine. “A good thing I’m immortal,” he said. “We can take as much time as you please.”
Virginia laughed, but the sound was mostly breath. “You forget—I am forbidden to you, sir.”
Slowly, he shook his head. “What you are, Miss Greening, is safe. There is nothing I can do that would hurt you.”
“You could leave,” she whispered.
“But I won’t,” he whispered back. His hands came up and his fingertips rested gently on her cheekbones.
Just that one simple touch was nearly her undoing. “Is this part of your incubus powers, Mr. Grieve?” she asked.
His teeth gleamed white in the flash of his smile. “No. This is just me.”
And he kissed her.
At once Virginia felt the flames leap up from the embers, as though he hadn’t ever really stopped kissing her despite the hours they’d been apart. The arm of the chair sank beneath her clutching fingers as she opened her mouth for him. James Grieve let out a deep groan and pressed his advantage, slipping his tongue between her lips and drinking deeply from her as though parched.
No, she thought, no food thoughts. But this desire was like hunger, coursing through her like ink through water—and now that she’d been promised satisfaction she let go and slipped deeper and deeper into the black.
She wanted his hands on her bare skin.
As though she’d spoken her thought aloud, his hands began to move, caressing down the column of her throat, teasing along the silk-clad slopes of her shoulders, tugging at the knot in the belt of her dressing gown. It parted, revealing the white lawn of her shift beneath. He pulled his mouth from hers and closed his eyes while his hands fisted in the loose orange silk at her waist. His breath was harsh and loud in her ears. “I’m usually a bit more self-controlled than this,�
�� he admitted, his voice kiss roughened.
“So am I,” Virginia replied.
He laughed at that—one of his real laughs, not the charming one he used when he was trying to steal her breath and stop her thoughts. She could taste that laugh on his lips when he kissed her again. It made her lean in to him, pressing her body against the long length of his, licking her tongue into his mouth the way she’d learned. Yes. This was what she’d wanted, what she’d craved without knowing it, this exchange of breaths and sighs and touches. It was marvelous and heady and rich and dark—and somehow it still wasn’t enough. Bare skin, she thought again as her pulse hammered within her.
Again he responded as though she’d spoken, sliding the dressing gown from her shoulders and letting it pool on the floor like liquid fire. Virginia barely had time to shiver in her thin shift before that garment, too, followed the orange silk to the carpet.
She was now as naked as he was.
He raked one searing glance down her body before pulling her tight against him. She gasped at the feel of all that hot skin and hard muscle and some wicked little part of her awoke and made her lean forward and press her lips to the hollow of his throat, right where his heartbeat pounded beneath his green skin.
He moaned again and Virginia could feel it vibrate through both their bodies. She also felt the tension in him, the heaviness of a coming storm. “I have to— I need...” he said.
“I know,” she whispered back against his chest.
“Not yet you don’t,” he said unsteadily. “But you’ll find out.” With rough hands he grabbed her hips and held her still against the steadying chair arm, then bent his head low and fastened his mouth over her nipple.
Oh, dear God, she’d needed this too. She cried aloud as he tormented her with that hot, knowing mouth of his. Her nipples tightened as pleasure rose up within her like a wave—and still it was not enough. Her hands moved restlessly on his shoulders as she reached further and further inside herself, straining for more pleasure, running to win even though she didn’t know the ground in this strange race.