by Nancy Gideon
Nicole looked up in surprise to see Bianca at the foot of her bed. Though they were both discreetly covered by the bed sheets, Nicole felt uncomfortably vulnerable to the woman’s dark stare.
Bianca eased up until she was standing near Marchand. Her pale fingers took him by the chin, turning his head from side to side. She frowned at the lack of evidence on his neck and Nicole felt herself bristle up in a protective defense.
“Don’t wake him.”
“He won’t awaken.” Then more curtly, “He shouldn’t awaken at all, at least not in this mortal form. What’s wrong with you, Nicole? Is his blood not to your taste? I should think it would be rich and strong in such a man.” And her fingertips lingered at the side of his throat. “If you do not want him—”
“I do! He’s mine. And you’d best remember that.”
Bianca’s gaze narrowed. She didn’t enjoy having her own threats thrust back at her. “Then take him now. Do not waste what I’ve brought you by indulging in unnecessary sentiment.”
A soft chuckle sounded from the shadowed corner of the room. “Could it be you’ve made a mistake, Bianca?” Gerard drifted forward, his expression lit with a mocking entertainment. “She is very much like Gino. Perhaps you have chosen unwisely. You should not have made her first one her innamoráto. Have you misjudged the power of the human heart in your greed to have all? A consistent failing of yours, I believe.”
Fury massed within the sleek vampiress until her image seemed to shimmer without true substance. Gerard stood laughing and unafraid while Nicole eased into a crouch over Marchand, ready to protect him from Bianca’s wrath if need be.
“Careful, cara,” Gerard taunted. “You are close to losing control most unattractively.”
Her essence solidified and very calmly, she remarked, “Careful, Gerardo, lest you lose your head. It might amuse me more than your sharp wit to have it upon a pole.”
“Oh, mía amáta, how could you ever replace me?”
“The world is full of fools. It would not be hard to do.”
Then he took a lightning-fast stride forward, seizing Bianca’s arms, pulling her up against him so their bodies were flush and their faces inches apart. His eyes were hot and iridescent as they blazed down into hers. And for an instant, the balance of power seemed to shift between them.
“Be careful,” he warned in a low, long whisper, “lest I grow bored with you.”
Bianca’s rigid posture altered, becoming all oozing and sensual. Her silken garments seemed to pour down him as she purred, “Oh, Gerardo, innamoráto, it is your Italian temper I love about you. Un amóre di bambíno. You can be such a charming child.” And she stretched up to kiss him, tugging at his lower lip with her sharp teeth while he stood unmoving and unblinking. She stroked his features and cooed flatteringly, “You are so beautiful. Don’t be cruel.”
Slowly he smiled, and he was beautiful, sleekly, darkly beautiful. “Sometimes I forget just how much I sacrificed for the love of you.”
The remark didn’t please her, and she searched his expression suspiciously, but it was bland and exquisite, revealing nothing. Until she walked away from him. Nicole saw a glaze of coldness settle over his face, as hard and unreadable as opaque ice. Then with another change that was also mercurial, he seemed to remember Nicole was there, for he turned to her with a chiding smile.
“Ah, my poor little Nicole. So it’s the love sickness you suffer from.” He made a tsk-tsk sound and settled languidly on the bed next to where Marchand slumbered in unnatural stillness. “He thought I was your lover. Imagine that.” And he looked down at the mortal man without a trace of any feeling whatsoever. Never had Gerard looked quite so alien to her as he slowly cocked his head the way spring birds do over damp earth. He was listening to the pulse of Marchand’s blood.
“Has my reluctance to take his life disappointed you too?” Her tone was sharper than she intended but Gerard only smiled.
“No, cara. You remind me much of your father. Gino, too, was a reluctant apprentice, whereas I took to my new state with a certain—zest.”
“Did—did Bianca make my father, too?”
Gerard had lifted Marchand’s arm and he was studying the pattern of his veins. “Sì, she made us both.” Nicole reacted to that news with a slight gasp, but he seemed lost to his reverie. “So long ago. Only she could never keep Gino with her. And he was the one she had wanted.” His luminous eyes closed as he rubbed his cheek along Marchand’s inner arm. He made a low, purring sound, reminding her deceivingly of an affectionate cat. Until he paused with his mouth pressed to Marchand’s wrist.
“Gerard,” Nicole called and his eyes slid open dreamily, their color hot and rimmed with red. “Please.” Her hand slipped between the caress of his lips and Marchand’s vulnerable veins. Gerard chuckled.
“Mí scúsi. I forgot myself.” He uncoiled to stand. “I nearly forgot something else, as well. I have something for you. A moment, please.” And in what seemed timed to the blink of an eye, he’d gone and returned to extend the familiar cup to her. “It’s no longer warm, but it will sustain you until you’re ready to seek out your own next meal.”
Her hands were trembling when they reached out. Already the scent enticed her like some dark perfume. Gerard’s face had gone strangely still, all sharp mysterious angles as he watched her drink.
“Slowly, Nicole.”
But how could she help her greed for life, for that’s what was in the cup—life. She felt it flood through her, plumping withering veins, warming chill flesh, strengthening all her flagging senses until the room seemed to spin about her. She was vaguely aware of Gerard taking the cup from her when it was emptied, of his hand at the back of her head guiding her up against the smooth silk of his waistcoat, where she closed her eyes, lost to the thrall of renewal. She felt his other hand cup beneath her chin, lifting it, then the leisurely movement of his mouth upon hers. It was a slow, sensual pressure, but in no way sexual. He had no human nature to arouse those kinds of feelings within her. He was tasting the blood upon her lips.
“Would that I could be your lover,” he murmured wistfully, then straightened and stepped away. Nicole blinked and gradually came around. He was standing over Marchand, looking down at him through those brilliant opaque eyes. “Do not keep him here, cara. You cannot keep a chicken amongst wolves and ask that they not be wolves.”
Wolves. Marchand hadn’t understood the true nature of the beast when he’d spoken of them being wolves. “I love him, Gerard,” she said with an unplanned simplicity.
“Oh, Nicole.” How sadly he said that, yet his impassive expression never flickered.
“I want with him the happiness my mother and father have.”
He gave a deep sigh. “Then my advice to you is to waste no time in telling him the truth of what you are. If he loves you enough to accept it, splèndido.”
“And if he can’t accept it?” Nicole whispered this, fearing his answer, fearing the possibility.
Gerard shrugged with supreme nonchalance. “Then you will do what you must and kill him quickly.”
Chapter Thirteen
FOR THE SECOND time, Marchand awoke without knowing where he was. However, it took him only a scant instant to recognize the sweet figure burrowed up against him upon the comfortable bed.
Nicole.
They’d made marvelous love together.
She’d told him she loved him.
That knowledge was enough to allay all his confusion of time and place as he basked in the pleasure of it. Did anything else really matter to him? He knew that answer was no as he lay upon his side studying the composed loveliness of her features in sleep. She was more beautiful than even he remembered with the dark cloud of hair swirled about soft, pinked skin. Her red-rouged lips were slightly parted and her lashes curved in feathery crescents upon exquisitely sculpted cheeks. A
bout her was an aura of ethereal timelessness that mesmerized, but it was her strength that held him spellbound. Such a strong, compassionate creature with her capacity to love despite flaws, to champion the cause of those she cared for.
She stirred slightly and that shift of movement drew his attention to the drape of the sheet across the perfection of her form. His recall of the prior night was sketchy at best. What he remembered were sensations rather than details; wonderful, delirious sensations, but now, he wanted to savor the specifics.
He laid his hand upon the sun-warmed sheet wound seductively about her middle. Gradually, he lowered to taste the softness of her lips, shaping them gently to fit his own. He felt her wake beneath his kiss, like the princess in a fairy tale he vaguely recollected his mother reciting to him and Frederic at bedtime. Only he was no rescuing prince, just a man with few sterling qualities and fewer prospects. But as her eyes flickered open and she whispered with husky pleasure, “My love,” that ceased to matter. Pride couldn’t touch the intensity of feeling this woman woke within him.
Instead of waking completely, Nicole continued to drift upon a languorous cloud of contentment, but she didn’t discourage him from touching her as she made soft sounds in the back of her throat and arched to meet the stroke of his palm. To Marchand, she was sleek satin over seductively contoured steel and he couldn’t help wondering how such a beautiful young woman had come by the tautly muscled strength of a man. Not that he didn’t find it attractive. And puzzling. And frightening. She was not like any woman he’d ever known. He didn’t know what to make of the difference, but it was undeniably exciting, that combination of dangerous vulnerability.
And she was all fragile female as he bent to nuzzle a temptingly rounded breast. When he took one pebble-hard peak into his mouth, her quiet gasps became delicate music that deepened in tone and quickened in tempo as his hand adored the concave of her belly and the angle of her hip and the silkiness of her inner thigh.
Nicole had thought nothing could rouse her from her determined daylight sleep, but Marchand LaValois was more than a little arousing. His touch was pure magic, creating tiny ripples of delight wherever he went. And his direction was uncanny, always building sensation upon sensation until she was writhing languidly against him. In her sated state of lethargy, it was wildly erotic the way he provoked a placid form to passion. He didn’t seem to mind that she lay still, absorbing rather than participating. In fact, he let her know how much he enjoyed cultivating her response with each lingering caress, with each slow, simmering kiss. And when his touch became its most intimate, rubbing, stroking, parting, until her own moisture became the balm he used to seek a deeper knowledge of her, his name escaped in a throbbing whisper and she let the pleasure take her.
Marchand was bemused by this strangely passive lover. She’d been fiercely aggressive with him before, overwhelming him with her far-from-shy demands. It had been like trying to mate with a jungle cat. Yet here she was, all purring and soft, making him doubt he’d ever felt that threat of violence in her. When she reached up for him, her arms wove about his neck in silken bonds that brought his mouth to hers. One of her hands curled about his nape, stroking there with an amazingly innocent sensuality. All the ardor he’d been so carefully holding in check ran hot and rampant through him now. As he shifted over her, the sweet parting of her thighs invited no further delay. He was trying to go slow, reminding himself that she was still almost virginal, but she was arching up against him, her palms sliding down from his shoulders along his back to taut flanks, clutching there and pulling impatiently to hurry his entrance.
Nicole gave a slight intake of surprise as he pressed his way in, then she released that suspended breath in a shuddering sigh. She’d feared perhaps it was the hunger for his blood that had made all seem so intense and sharply satisfying that first time. It wasn’t. It was the way Marchand fit her, immense and powerful, that drove all the fears and isolation away. In this, she could be one with him at last.
He began to move, a gentle plunging designed for her comfort at the risk of his control. Too soon, she was anxious for more and frustrated with his care. But loving him fiercely because of it.
“Marchand, you needn’t fear that you’ll hurt me. Love me the way you’d like to.”
He paused at her quiet plea. Then his mouth was on hers, open and insistent. Her body warped up with the shock of his first hand thrust, then began an undulating welcome for those that followed. And as he continued to take her with those long, commanding strokes, he caught her hands as they clawed at him in helpless abandon and pressed the backs of them into the mattress above her head.
Hot, shivery sensations streaked along her veins, stunning Nicole as she realized it was very much like the ecstasy of feeding and hunger. He coaxed a massing, churning tension inside her. The pleasure kept building, building until the beauty of it had her taking flight.
Marchand felt her body lunge up against him and he reached down to support the arch of her spine. He was stunned to discover that it wasn’t only the curve of her back and that had left the mattress. Neither were her shoulders or hips touching upon the tangled sheets.
In fact, no part of her except the glossy dark hair spilling down from the tossing of her head made contact with the bed.
She was floating a good four inches above it.
He was so startled, he would have withdrawn right then. Except at that same instant, she found her fulfillment. The fiery walls of her body clutched around him like a fist, contracting in unbelievably hard, pulling spasms. The response she wrung from him was nothing short of cataclysmic.
Then, as her constrictive passion eased, her body sank languidly back upon the bed. And shaking with the violent force of his release and with the quickening of fear she’d inspired, Marchand rolled away from her onto his back, lying there with eyes squeezed shut and breathing labored.
Mon Dieu, what was she?
“Marchand?”
He fought not to recoil as her hand cupped about the curve of his jaw to turn his head toward her. He was rigid with alarm but she smiled at him, not seeing his dismay through eyes of a smoky jade green, all soft with satisfaction.
“I love you, Marchand,” she murmured before burrowing close, her head upon his chest and her arms circling his middle.
He swallowed hard and forced himself to touch her. His hand stroked along her hair in an unsteady movement, but when she sighed sweetly and kissed his bare chest, much of the terror gave way as well.
“I love you, too, Nicole.”
And he meant it. God help him, whatever she was, he meant it.
WHEN HE AWOKE, it was dark. The image of Nicole in silhouette seated at his shoulder gave Marchand a violent start, as if there was something unwholesome in the way she watched over him while he slept. If she noticed his reaction, she pretended she hadn’t.
“How do you feel, my love?” she asked in a shadow-steeped whisper.
It was then he realized how truly awful he did feel. His head was pounding, his ribs ached. The gash in his shoulder felt like a streak of liquid fire. None of these things had registered earlier and he wondered why. Had she given him some drug? Was that why he’d slept nearly all the day away?
“Marchand, who hurt you?”
Memory came flooding back. “I have to go.” He tried to sit up, but Nicole’s palm pressed to the center of his chest.
“Who hurt you?”
“I have to leave. I have to make sure Frederic is all right.”
“Why? What’s happened? Marchand, tell me. Maybe I can help.”
“De Sivry ordered me killed because I resisted his offers of work. Several of his men were about to accomplish that goal when your foreign friend interrupted them.”
“Gerard?”
“He must have scared them off.” He didn’t say Gerard had killed them. He didn’t want to alarm her.
But something in the way she turned her head sharply to one side told him that she already guessed the truth. “He brought me here. He saved my life.”
“He saved you for me.” There was nothing simple in that multishaded meaning. “Marchand, it’s too dangerous for you to stay in the city. I know a place where you’ll be safe.”
He shook his head. “Frederic—”
“Can come, too. And Musette.”
“Just like that? How will we live—”
“We’ll go to my home. I am—I am very wealthy. I can see you all well provided for. Let me take care of you for a change.”
He became quiet then, studying her. She wasn’t sure what she saw in his expression; reluctance or rebellion, but it finally became resignation. “I can’t see that I have much choice. I haven’t done a very good job of taking care of anyone so far.” He was seeing Camille and Bebe. He was seeing the threat of Gaston’s smile.
“Yes, you have,” Nicole protested. She twisted and came down to him, bringing her face close with her elbows braced on either side of his head. Her fingertips swept the dark hair back from his brow as her gaze delved into his. “You have, Marchand. No man could have done as well under the same circumstances. You don’t give yourself half enough credit. But it’s a wise man who knows when to ask for help. Ask me, Marchand.”
He was stubbornly silent for a long beat and she thought he’d say nothing. Then, his hands rose up to stroke along her shoulders, nudging beneath the spill of her hair to move upon bare flesh. “I would be glad for your help, Nicole. We are kindred spirits, you and I. We need each other.”
Her smiled trembled with fragile emotion. Then he coaxed her down to him, to his expectant kiss, to his warm embrace. And as she lingered there within the circle of his arms, feeling the vibrant pulse of him, remembering the rich taste of him upon her tongue, she strengthened her resolve. She would take him home with her. And there, she could keep him safe from the evils of Paris. And there, she would learn how to keep him safe from the evils within her. If her mother and father could exist together for over seventeen years, they had to know the secret of self-control. She would have it from them. They owed her that much. And she would have Marchand.
