“Narcise,” he groaned, pulling her face up to meet his. Their mouths met again, fierce and hungry as he pulled at the flap of her breeches, yanking the square of buttons loose.

Her sharp tooth sliced his lip and warm blood slicked her mouth and his. Rich and lush, just enough to tease and to send desire raging through her, and she kissed him deeper.

He smiled against her mouth and pulled away long enough to murmur, “Tease.”

She smiled back and sucked hard on his full, lower lip just as he managed to pull her trousers away, yanking them down past her knees. “That’s all I need,” she said as they tipped onto the bed.

He gave a soft, pained laugh as she straddled him, her breeches clinging to only one leg. Her hands settled onto his shirt, for he was still fully clothed. Narcise looked down into his hot, focused eyes and slicked her tongue over her lips and the jut of her fangs as she curled her fingers around his erection. Chas tensed and his eyes narrowed in pleasure.

Then she shifted and rose and slipped him inside—the hot, hard length of him. She sighed as he filled her, touching her deep inside in that place…and the tremors of pleasure shook inside her, bursting into heat that flushed through her body. Ah.

Chas groaned, tipping his head back, the tendons in his neck and throat taut and inviting. She shifted, moving her hips slowly, purposely out of rhythm, teasing him just as he was teasing her. One of his hands reached up to pull at her loose shirt, closing over one of her breasts, and his thumb found the jut of her nipple. Pleasure panged in her belly and down as he gently twisted and stroked.

Narcise shifted again, moving up and down and around and he opened his eyes. “Damn you,” he gasped, looking up with glittering eyes. “Do it.”

She smiled and planted her hands on his heaving chest, feeling the slide of muscle there and the power of his lethal hands on her hips as he helped her in the rise and fall, the sleek slide. Long and easy, as if they were out for an evening ride.

She bent forward, her face near his, the blood on his lower lip glistening. His breath puffed into her cheek, his hands solid at her hips, his own hips moving up to meet hers.

“Do it,” he whispered, turning his face away.

She shifted, scraping her incisors against the smooth heat of his skin, felt his breathing change as he waited for her to sink in. She licked the salt of his flesh, nibbled at the rise of the taut muscle in his throat, felt him tense everywhere…the shift of his breath as he waited.

“No,” she whispered, deep in his ear, and thrust her tongue inside as an apology.

“Narcise,” he begged.

“You don’t want me to,” she told him, tasting his lip again, knowing it was the truth. Knowing how he always hated himself after.

Please. His mouth formed the word against her cheek, but she pulled up and away and yanked off her shirt.

Her breasts were free and high, and his hands closed on them. She bent forward for one more swipe over his bloodied lip and then let herself go…increasing the rhythm, lifting her hands above her head as they shifted and slammed together.

She cried out first, the taste of his blood mingled with her own as she bit her lip, his mouth suddenly fastened onto one of her nipples. Her body tightened around his, and he arched beneath her in a final exertion and heartfelt groan.

“Mmm,” he said as she shifted to the side, collapsing next to his warm, still-clothed body. A lean hand stroked along her hip and he turned toward her. “What a fool am I,” he murmured in a voice not quite low enough to hide the wryness. “Taking up with a vampire.”

She closed her eyes, but stretched like a waking cat beneath his hand. Being touched with gentleness was something she craved more than he could understand. “I’m not certain who is more the fool, Chas. The hunter or the hunted.” She heard rather than saw him smile, and sensed the cynicism there.

He shifted next to her and sat up. “There is something I must tell you.”

Narcise’s heart skipped but she kept her eyes closed, kept her body languid. It had been a matter of self-preservation to learn that skill. “You’re going to confess how many Dracule you’ve killed?”

“I’ve lost count,” he replied, an answering hint of humor there. “But you needn’t fear I’ll turn on you. I’ve no energy left after this last bout.” His hand had stopped stroking her hip and now he moved it away from where it had rested on her waist. “I’m meeting someone below.”

Narcise’s eyes flew open. “What?” He’d promised he’d keep their whereabouts secret. Completely secret. That he’d tell no one they were in England, let alone where they were. “Chas, what have you done?”

He sat up fully and looked down at her. “I have three sisters. I have to—”

“But Dimitri is seeing to them—and isn’t one in a convent school? Cezar will never get past either Dimitri or the holy walls.”

Chas was nodding. “Yes, but I must at least let them know I’m alive. And I need to know that they’ve been taken care of. I assure you, no one will be the wiser to our presence here. Only one person knows of the meeting, and I trust Cale with my life.”

Giordan? Narcise’s heart stopped. No.

“Perhaps you don’t remember Giordan Cale, but he’s a confidant of Dimitri. Not titled, but rich as Croesus and—” he gave a gentle laugh “—more than a match for me. I met him when I sneaked in to stake him. Obviously, we both lived.”

Narcise found her voice. “Obviously.” And just as obviously, one thing Chas didn’t know was the history between Cezar and Giordan. And her.

“I can meet him below, but it wouldn’t be as private if I asked him up here,” Chas was saying. “Less chance of us being seen.”

She couldn’t swallow. That was the very last thing she wanted or needed: her former lover meeting with her current lover. In this very room, where the smell of their relations permeated the chamber, the sheets, the air.

“No,” was all she said.

He measured her with his look. “Very well, Narcise.”

And she wondered, then, if after all, he did know.

10

CORVINDALE’S CHAMBERS INVADED

The Earl of Corvindale swept into the chamber like a violent storm.

Angelica leaped up from her seat on the chair—not the chair on which Voss had…oh, God, on which he’d attacked her, but the other one.

Corvindale scanned the room quickly, then looked at her with dark, piercing eyes. “You’re unhurt?”

Angelica nodded, catching herself before reaching toward the soreness at her neck. Despite the fact that it was his, she’d pulled the cloak Voss had left up and around her shoulders, hiding the bite marks and dried blood.

Without another word, Corvindale gestured to the door through which he’d come and she walked toward it. Her heart felt heavy and her head pounded, and she wished for nothing more than to quit this place.

She was relieved that Voss was nowhere to be found as she stepped into the corridor; not that she’d expected him to be, considering what she knew about his interactions with Corvindale. The back of her throat burned and tears threatened her eyes. How could he?

“Angelica!” cried a voice, and the next thing she knew, Maia had enveloped her in a crushing hug.

“Blast it, Miss Woodmore,” Corvindale snapped. “I told you to remain in the bloody carriage.” Pausing to glare at two dishonorable-looking men who’d appeared from around a corner, he urged them down the narrow, dirty hall and gestured even more sharply than he had in the chamber a moment before. “Can you not listen to reason for one moment?”

“It’s my sister we’ve come to retrieve,” Maia shot back. Her arm curved tight around Angelica’s waist as she propelled her down the corridor ahead of the furious earl. Uncharacteristically, Maia’s chestnut-auburn hair was in disarray and she was not only dressed in an old daydress, but she was also gloveless. “And leaving that aside, what harm could come to me when you are here, my lord?”

Even through the mix of emotions that whirled in her mind, Angelica heard the dip of sarcasm in Maia’s voice.

“This is no place for a lady.” Corvindale reached past them to fling the external door open. Only a bit more illumination filtered into the hall, for it was well past twilight now. “Devil take it, Miss Woodmore. Do you have a complete lack of sense?”

Maia sniffed and pushed past him out into the darkness, pulling Angelica with her. In her haste, she narrowly avoided a puddle of something disgusting and climbed into the carriage with her sister’s help. Maia settled in the seat next to her.

Corvindale spoke to the groom then joined them inside, taking up nearly the entire seat across from them with his wide shoulders and arms stretched across the back. His long legs were tucked into the space between Maia’s skirts and the side of the vehicle. The door closed and with barely a jolt, they started off.

“You’re not hurt?” Maia was asking as Angelica tried to bury herself in the corner of the seat, huddling beneath the cloak that smelled of Voss. The scent was both nauseating and familiar. “What happened? Where have you been?”

But Angelica didn’t wish to talk. Now that she was safe, all she wanted to do was curl up in a corner and cry.

“Angelica,” Maia said, tugging at the cloak as if to draw her attention.

Angelica clutched it tighter, partly because she was chilled and partly because she sensed that it would not bode well if Maia or the earl saw the marks on her neck. There would be more questions, more demands and remonstrations, along with pity and sympathy. None of which she wanted to contend with. “Miss Woodmore,” Corvindale broke in icily, “perhaps you might leave your sister to her own thoughts. It’s clear, at least to me, that she is in no humor to speak at this time.”

Angelica felt Maia’s outrage and eyed her sister with interest. It wasn’t often that she received a set-down, and even more rare that she would decline to respond in her own bitingly proper way. But to her surprise, she merely turned away from the earl and redoubled her efforts to get Angelica to answer her questions.