by Olivia Waite
It was because she actually knew him, he had finally reasoned. They’d spent nearly as much time telling stories as they had trading kisses. He’d heard all about her childhood in the country and she’d listened to anecdotes of his wanderings through human history—Rome under the emperors, Eleanor of Aquitaine, the painters of Renaissance Venice. The days had passed while he’d lounged in her bedroom, breathing in the smell of her, reading books she’d left for him and whiling away the hours until she returned and his proper talents could be put to use. It was intoxicating simply to be himself with her, rather than some amalgamation of dream men or the lustful fantasy lover he’d played with so many women over the years.
It wasn’t precisely easy to let down his guard after so many centuries, but every time he fell back into his old seducer’s ways Virginia would inevitably notice and start laughing at his tired clichés and worn-out lines. Then he’d have to kiss her to stop her laughing, and then...
He shook his head to clear it and resumed his watch. Would the sun never set?
Yesterday, as he’d lounged in the tumbled sheets, she’d risen, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and drowsily requested a full night without him.
“Really?” He’d gone cold, shocked to think she’d tired of him. It was always the other way around. He thought about trying to work up the desire to feed off some other woman’s pleasure and felt pure panic set in.
“Just so I can get some sleep, James,” Virginia had said, with a laugh that soothed his initial alarm. “I’m so exhausted I can hardly see straight. I’m not used to being so active during the night.” Then she’d given him a glance and a smile that had reminded him what particular activities she was remembering. It had been more than enough to tempt James back into bed to repeat them.
Instead he’d found himself nodding. “All right,” he’d said. “Tomorrow night then.”
“Tomorrow,” she’d promised—and shooed him out of the window in a manner he suspected was beneath his dignity.
Then James Grieve had come face to face with the fact that he had no idea what humans did all day.
Normally when he left one woman he immediately wanted to move on to the next, so his days had always been spent in hunting and the pursuit of his next affair. But human men did not stalk ladies in the same way—skulking across rooftops, invading their dreams, appearing and disappearing as they pleased. Men had to meet women in parlors and sitting rooms, in Hyde Park and Vauxhall and other public places. They had to court in full view of everyone else, with no supernaturally enhanced skills to assure them of success.
And they had to do it in the all-too-brief span of time before Death caught up with them.
What did that feel like? James wondered. Did it feel...pressing, like a weight on their shoulders? Or rushed, like the incessant flutter of wings? Did they hear the clock ticking away all the time, counting down the small number of precious seconds as they slid like sand through grasping fingers?
They were mayflies—and James was a relic.
Since he could think of nothing better to do, he went to join the other relics housed in the British Museum.
There were a few people in the galleries, but since they couldn’t see him James was able to ignore them in favor of cool marble limbs and pale muscles, naked like himself and sculpted by hands long since turned to dust. He’d observed such an artist once, who had taken as a model the Athenian courtesan James had been pursuing. The sculptor had been nearly as broad in the shoulder as he was tall, with strange calluses and one long, white scar down the length of his cheek. But when he talked his voice had been soft and slow, his words thoughtful and considered, completely at odds with his burly appearance. James had been fascinated, following the man back to his workshop on a whim and spending hours watching him transform rough blocks of stone into smooth limbs and faces that all but quivered with life.
Now James made a point to look at every piece on display, driven by a strange new feeling of camaraderie with these artifacts. Aside from himself, these statues seemed like the only things in the whole city that lay outside the cruel reach of time. He had a brief vision of himself taking his place beside the frozen form of the discus thrower, standing proud in his nudity to be marveled at by countless generations of gawking women in years to come.
And none of those women would be Virginia Greening.
A chill ran down his back and he shivered. What a waste of time this separation was—it felt as though he had been given a handful of rare pearls and now he was dropping them one by one into the gutter. And all too soon his hands would be empty.
But he’d promised Virginia a night alone. He was not going to break his word—if only because it would make her angry and then she might send him permanently away. To some of his kind her wishes wouldn’t have mattered, but James had never had the stomach for unwilling partners. He liked them more than willing: enthusiastic, in fact.
Predator, whispered a voice in the back of his head.
James had balled his hands into fists and left the museum, suddenly yearning for crowds and commotion. For the rest of the day and the night that followed, he’d wandered the London streets, watching fights and flirtations and arguments and crimes and anything else that happened outside a bedroom or boudoir.
When on the second day St. Paul’s tolled the evening hour, James had felt his heart leap in answer to the great church bell. He’d been airborne a scant second later and winging over the Greenings’ home mere minutes after that.
He’d moved too fast, apparently, as Virginia’s curtains had still been drawn tight. Tense and watchful, James had shifted his weight and kept his eyes upon that all- important swath of fabric.
The sun went down.
The moon came out.
The night air was chill and sharp with the faint beginnings of autumn. James’ wings fanned idly in the light breeze as he focused on those dark curtains.
Finally—movement.
The curtains opened and Virginia’s familiar form was silhouetted in the candlelight from the room behind her. Her arms were spread wide to push the heavy drapes aside and he could see the gleam of orange silk as she leaned forward to peer at the darkened garden and the rooftops all around.
With a jolt of pleasure James realized that she was looking for him.
Not all God’s angels armed with swords of flame could have stopped him from going to her.
He tipped himself forward off the roof.
* * * * *
Virginia stepped backward as James glided through the night, all dark grace and coiled strength. He slipped through her small bedroom window and unfolded to his full height while candlelight flowed like water over every plane and contour of his flesh.
And before she had time to admire all the impressive beauty of him, he had closed the distance between them, swept her into his arms and tumbled her beneath him on the bed.
Virginia laughed up at him and wound her arms around his neck. “I missed you too,” she said and kissed him, her mouth opening against his, sharing the warmth of her breath with him.
He trembled and kissed her ravenously, pinning her in place with his weight as if his very life depended on keeping his body pressed to hers. Maybe it did, Virginia thought with a pang. Maybe Hell was breathing down his neck again, trying to pull him out of the world and away from her. Beneath her hands his skin was cool from the night air outside. She curved one hand against the nape of his neck and held him as tightly as she could.
Since that first night he’d appeared at her window, Virginia had felt as though her waking life were a dream and her real life unfolded at night in her bed with James. It was intoxicating to learn the mechanics of pleasure—her own as well as his—but after three weeks and many drowsy, half-attentive afternoons, she had begun to worry that she was growing too obsessed, too fixated, losing touch with the rest of the human world.
So she’d asked him for a day apart, a bulwark against the dark seas on which she feared to find herself adrift and rudder
less. She needed to prove she was still part of the mortal world, that she could go about the business of a day the way she used to, that she was not lost to everything except the taste of his mouth and the feel of his body sinking into hers. That the wicked self she’d felt awaken that first night was not the only self she had left.
And so she had gone shopping with her mother for some new frippery or other. Several acquaintances had stopped by for a pleasant tea and in the evening she and her parents had gone to a small dinner at the Breakwells’ house. It had been a day no more interesting and no less dull than any she’d had in the past year.
Virginia had succeeded in proving that she could live in tolerable comfort without the presence of one James Grieve.
If you could call it living.
She could do it, she’d found, for one entire day. As long as she concentrated and put all her effort into getting by, minute by minute. And it was just possible that she could do it for the rest of her life. She could take one day at a time, thinking no further into the future than her next social engagement and remembering nothing about the past except which gown she’d worn to what event. There were small, congenial pleasures to be found in such a life—the warmth of tea seeping through china and into chilled fingers, the sound of rain on glass, the feel of silk against skin, the warmth of a friend’s smile and the laughter that followed a story well told.
But when she thought of months or years or decades spent like that, keeping her truest thoughts to herself and her heart carefully shuttered, she wanted quite frankly to start breaking dishes or punching holes in the nearest wall.
She could live without James, but that was not the same thing as wanting to live without him.
Perhaps it made her greedy, but in addition to the smaller pleasures she wanted this—the press of his fingers against her flesh, the slide of her palms along the planes of his back, the heat of his mouth and the sharp points of his teeth as he turned his head and gently bit the tender column of her neck. The depth of her own desire made her shake. All her careful self-possession burned away in a blaze of purest need and Virginia slipped one hand between their bodies and wrapped it around his hard cock.
James gasped and moved against her, making harsh, pleased sounds in the back of his throat. Those noises skittered along her spine and made heat pool between her legs—she liked it and repeated the caress, stroking her hand up and down and running her thumb along the delicate skin beneath the head of his cock.
James shook again and growled, “Too much.” When she did it again just to be provoking he raised himself a little and pulled her hands above her head. Laughing, Virginia arched up toward him, trying to lure him back down against her—but she paid for this distraction when she felt something wrap around her wrists. Surprised, she looked up and saw that he’d pulled the belt from her dressing gown and used it to tie her wrists to the nearest bedpost. The orange silk looked painfully bright against her pale skin. “This is new,” she said. After three weeks, newness itself was no longer frightening, but something about this particular novelty made her cautious.
He paused to look down at her in the moonlight. “Does it feel all right?” he asked.
Still considering her position, Virginia tugged a little on the bonds—they were tight enough that she couldn’t slip free, but not so tight that she would lose feeling in her hands and fingers. “It feels...different,” she murmured, shifting a little to test her range of motion. She saw his gaze arrow down to her breasts, where in the curling shadows her nipples stood tightened with both arousal and the room’s chill. She felt somehow more than naked with her shoulders and arms clad in silk but the rest of her bared. It was a feeling that refused to be easily categorized. To stall for a moment, she said, “One of us should probably close the window.”
With a curse he was up and across the room, yanking down the sash and flipping the latch closed. She thought that he would return to the bed just as quickly, but instead he took his time, walking over at a deliberate pace and just looking down at her, bound and stretched out in a pool of candlelight.
There was something so feral, so intense in his gaze that Virginia felt a bolt of something very like panic. This was precisely what she had been concerned about—that she’d got so tangled up in him that she was now a prisoner. That she couldn’t escape this obsession or outrun the desire he’d unleashed within her. That she was trapped, vulnerable, defenseless. That she no longer belonged to herself.
She was trapped, she realized, by her own yearning as much as by the silk that bound her wrists. This was her fear made physical. This was as bad as things were going to get. She was caught and she was going to be taken. There was nothing she could do about it—and nothing she wanted to do about it.
To her own surprise, this thought arrived on a great wave of relief.
And just like that she was free.
She was enjoying this—the slide of silk and the soft shiver of cool air on different parts of her body. His gaze on her was all but tactile, a declaration of his intentions and proof of his desire. She felt herself dampen between her legs and had to fight the urge to arch her hips up and spread her thighs. Her partial captivity made her more aware than she had ever been before of how her muscles tensed and stretched. It was a strange combination of power and imprisonment, twined together until she couldn’t tell them apart.
Virginia felt that wicked part of herself wake up again and reveled in it. She wondered where he would start, where he would touch her first, how long it would be before she came, before he slid his cock inside her...
A whimper escaped her throat.
James went still, studying her carefully. “Are you all right?” he asked. Virginia’s throat was too dry for speech, so she simply nodded.
The crease that appeared between his brows indicated that he was not convinced. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m moving too fast, I’m assuming too much—here, let me untie...”
He reached for the orange silk around her wrists, but Virginia shook her head and he stopped. “No,” she gasped. “Just—touch me...”
The slight frown disappeared and he began to smile, a very little, as though he couldn’t believe what she was suggesting. “Touch you?” he said, and Virginia heard the mischievous tone in his voice. “Touch you where?”
He was torturing her, the bastard. She reveled in that too. “Anywhere,” she said.
“Here?” he asked. And placed his fingertips on her ankle.
That light nothing of a caress was as nourishing as rain in the desert and just as quickly gone. Virginia groaned at the loss. “More,” she demanded.
His palm pressed flat against her skin, then skated up the long curve of her leg. She breathed in and out and resolved not to beg him to hurry, though she very nearly did when his fingers dipped teasingly to the hollow behind her knee. His hands were as subtle and precise as those of a musician, bringing every thrumming nerve to life with resonant need.
All the while he was watching her face, gauging her reaction. Teasing and torturing, but aloof from her.
That wasn’t what she wanted.
She wanted him out of control, as he’d been that first night. She wanted that dizzy feeling when he slipped inside both her body and her thoughts—she knew that was one of his more-than-mortal talents. He’d used it on her, but sparingly, and she wanted more. She wanted everything.
So Virginia let all her desire, desperation and need show in her face and said, “Please, James.”
Those two small words were enough to break his trance. In an instant, he was above her on the bed, sliding his hands beneath her thighs and moving between her legs. She spurred him on with a cry as his cock thrust home within her, deep and thick and hard. He took her mouth and she arched up against him just as she felt the dark tendrils of his thoughts curl into her mind, surrounding himself in her pleasure even as he sheathed himself in her body.
This time, for the first time, Virginia did the same to him.
It was an un
intended, instinctive move on her part—she pushed somehow forward, and felt both his astonishment at her invasion and then his profound delight and welcome. She pulled her mouth from James’—or was it his mouth he pulled from hers?—and both of them cried out. He began to move within her, a gentle back-and- forth glide, and Virginia moaned at the doubled sense of friction. She could feel every teasing ripple of her cunt, every tug on the delicate skin of his cock and every jolt of James’ elation at those shared senses. He nipped at her earlobe with a low chuckle while she slowly and steadily found her bearings in this new wealth of sensation.
She reached out for the desires she knew must be there—if he could steal into her thoughts and gratify unspoken wishes, she was going to do the same.
All at once she was surrounded by the bodies of other women.
Memories, she realized—scraps of brocade fabric and flickering torches, powdered faces and antique music told her that most of these things had happened long ago. But there James was, naked as ever, undulating beneath a voluptuous woman with dark red hair. Above another woman whose skin was as black as night against the whiteness of the sheets, their hips plunging. Twined with a frail-looking blonde while a brunette curled nearby, stroking them both.
Virginia broke away and fled back to the sanctuary of her own mind.
James, above her and within her, went still. She could feel the tears prickle at the corners of her eyes and hated it, hated this sudden burn of fear, but couldn’t seem to stem the tide or formulate any words to address what she’d seen. And he was still above her, and her wrists were still tied, and there was no way of escaping and now she was trapped...
He looked down into her eyes, very solemn, and said, “There is no one in the world but you.”