She must be the best prostitute in the world if she could do all that without so much as touching him.
“If you don’t mind,” she said, trying to brush past him, “I’m going home. Or rather, I’m going to go to my cousin’s home. You guys can just continue on with your oddball ways without me. Imogen…hell, I don’t know what to say to you. I guess I’ll just keep mum to Gretl about the fact that you evidently have some…did you say daughter? Imogen is your daughter?” Io looked startled when she turned to face Imogen again. “You told me your dad was dead. Although your brother said he wasn’t, but I kind of figured he was a little light in the noggin since he also said he was some sort of a vampire.”
Everyone in the room froze, including Nikola. The odd side of his mind noticed that Io’s declaration had, at least, had the benefit of killing his erection, but that wasn’t really important.
“Who are you, how did you meet my children, and how do you know about—” He stopped, unwilling to speak in front of the superstitious servants. He’d carried his secret close to his breast, not even allowing his valet to know the truth about Benedikt and Imogen, or how the curse had come to be. Other than his children, only two others knew the truth. He eyed the woman again. Had one of his half brothers spoken to her about him?
It was all very much a puzzle, and along with mysterious women, he disliked puzzles intensely.
The Incredible Adventures of Iolanthe Tennyson
July 12
If someone finds this journal someday and says to herself, “Holy jumping cats, whoever wrote this seriously needed to have some penmanship lessons,” please note that I’m writing with a quill. A quill. One from a bird. Goose, I think, or something big like that. Regardless, it’s really, really hard to write with a quill without leaving big ole blotches of ink everywhere, not to mention ripping up the paper, and just trying to get letters formed so they’re actually readable.
Man, things have gotten so weird, I’m actually ranting about a feather.
But I promised I was going to do this properly, and I am.
Right after I woke up in some strange dude’s place (and when I say “strange dude,” I don’t just mean someone I didn’t know—Nikola was a very odd man, what with his demands that I tell him about my boyfriends, and then getting bent out of shape when I did so, and some strange equation that he kept yammering on about), I knew immediately something seriously wrong was going on.
For one, I couldn’t remember a damned thing about how I had ended up in the room.
For another, and I’m totally at a loss how this could even be, I seemed to have woken up in some ultraconservative cult, kind of like Amish people who insisted on living just as if they were three hundred years in the past.
And lastly, the strange dude appeared to be under the impression that I was a hooker. Me! And Imogen was a part of it. “Look,” I said to Imogen’s father, who more closely resembled an older brother than a father, but it was clear there was some sort of weird genetic thing going on with that family.
You could say that.
“Look, I’m not a ho.” I stopped, frowning at the voice in my head. I’ve never been one to talk to myself, and I didn’t want to start. “And I’m not exactly sure what I’m doing here, but I really do think it’s time I go back to town. Does someone have a phone I could use? I seem to have lost mine.”
Everyone, every single person from the effeminate guy in some sort of Georgian costume with a big pink wig to the mega-conservative short, round lady who kept calling for the others to do heinous things to me, stared just as if I’d said something exceptional.
“What, you guys don’t have any technology here?” I glanced around the room. There was a fire in a fireplace set in the wall opposite the bed, and lots and lots of candles all over the room. It was a bit of a fire hazard, to be honest, and I wondered what sort of sprinkler system they had in place just in case one of those candles tipped over. “None whatsoever? Even the Amish folks can have cell phones if they keep them in a special place.”
“She’s speaking in tongues!” the crazy round lady exclaimed, pointing at me with one hand while clutching the tall, willowy Imogen with the other. “She is the devil’s plaything and must be destroyed!”
“I am no one’s plaything, and nice manners abroad or not, you’re really starting to work my nerves, lady,” I told her, giving her a gimlet eye. “I wouldn’t dream of telling you people how to run your cult or religion or whatever it is that you’re doing here, but I am not a doormat, and I will not let you walk all over me. So you can do the rest of us a big ole fat favor and just get over yourself already.”
I might have yelled that last sentence at the crazy lady, but that’s no excuse for the handsome Nikola to suddenly snap into action, clearing the room of everyone in a matter of seconds.
“Leave us!” he bellowed, waving one imperious hand.
To my surprise, everyone did as he ordered. Imogen slid me a long, long look as she left, as well. That surprised me a bit, but I realized I had no claim on her friendship with Gretl.
Still, it would have been nice of her to offer me the use of her cell phone.
“Now you will explain to me what game you are playing,” Nikola demanded.
It was his eyes, I decided, that made a little shiver run down my back. He had the eyes of a white wolf: pale, icy blue, with a black ring around the outer edge of the iris. Set against that black hair, and a face that could have graced any fashion magazine, his eyes packed a wallop that I was steadfastly determined to resist.
I was not in the market for a man, even an older one who probably had worked out all his issues. Especially one who looked like Nikola did—I knew from experience how men who felt they were god’s gift to the world acted, and I wanted nothing to do with another one of that ilk.
“I do not play games, not the sort you’re referring to,” I said with much dignity. “I’m sure you’re busy with your party or cosplay or religious cult or whatever it is you folks are doing, so I’ll just get out of your hair. I’d prefer to call my cousin, but if you don’t have a phone, then I guess I’ll just have to walk to the nearest one.”
“Who told you I was a Dark One?”
“No one told me…wait, you mean Dark One like vampire?” I gawked at him for a minute. Had I gone completely insane? “You think you’re a vampire, too? Like Benedikt?”
“You will tell me what you know of my son!” he said as he stalked slowly toward me. “You will tell me how you have learned about the curse.”
“I will?” He really was a handsome devil, once he stood where the candlelight could play all over his face. He was dressed in a costume, as well—costume! He was wearing a costume! I slumped in relief on the bed, my anxiety level dropping when I realized that everyone must be attending a costume party. That or they were part of a local theater troupe. “What curse would that be?”
The one that has made my life a living hell.
I sat up straight at the voice in my head. Since when did my brain play tricks like that on me? I must have hit my head harder than I thought. Great, now I’d have to go see a doctor to find out why voices were suddenly talking in my brain.
“Do not play coy with me, madame. I neither desire nor seek such an attitude. Was it Rolf? Arnulf? Did they tell you what happened to me?”
“I don’t know an Arnold or a Ralph, so the answer to that is a rock-solid no.” I eyed him as he moved toward me, all sorts of warning bells going off in my head, and not just because the man moved like a panther about to pounce on some unwary prey.
He wasn’t a whole lot taller than me, but he was broad across the chest and shoulders; that much I could see even through the fancy outfit he wore. His hair was black, curly, and worn longish in the back, not—thank god—in a mullet, but still long enough that it was caught up in a little ponytail. He had an interesting face with a long, straight nose, a chin that made me a bit weak in the knees, and those eyes…oh, those eyes. He certainly didn’t look like
a man in his sixties, which he must be if Imogen was in her forties. I shook my head at my confused thoughts. There was just something different about Nikola that went beyond the obvious sex appeal.
Warmth flooded me at that acknowledgment, a sexual sort of warmth, one that startled me with its intensity. “Oh, lovely, I probably have some sort of serious brain injury as a result of…of…” I screwed up my eyes and tried to force myself to remember what I had been doing before I woke up here.
“You did not hit Heinrich hard enough to injure your brain,” Nikola said, his voice, a lovely rich baritone, doing something wonderful to my insides. “You will look at me when I am speaking to you!”
Nothing breaks the spell of a yummy male voice like an obnoxious demand. I popped open one eye to glare at him. “OK, one, you are so not the boss of me, and two, I do not respond well to orders. If you had asked politely, I would have told you that I’ve closed my eyes so that I can try to remember what happened to me before I woke up here.”
I closed my eye again, and concentrated.
“I can tell you what you did to end up here.”
“Really?” I opened my eyes once more. “What?”
“You ran into Heinrich.”
I frowned, not recognizing the name. Was it one of Gretl’s friends? “I don’t think I’ve met a Heinrich.”
“You were running down the road in your underthings, and you ran directly into Heinrich, knocking yourself senseless.”
I looked down at myself, shocked at the idea of running anywhere in my undies. “I was running around in my underwear? What the hell was I doing that for? Who’s Heinrich? And who dressed me again?”
“Yes, I have no idea, one of my carriage horses, and we did not find your gown, let alone put it on you. Now, you will cease—”
“Wait a minute, I think we’re talking at cross-purposes,” I interrupted, holding up a hand to stop him.
He looked thoroughly outraged that I’d do such a thing. “You will not interrupt me!”
“I just did, didn’t I? Thus, I will. Er…did. And someone must have put my dress back on, assuming that I was, in fact, running around in my undies, because I’m wearing it now. My dress, that is.” I waved toward my torso. “This is really a bizarre conversation, you know that? Like, on the level of reality TV sort of bizarre.”
He glanced down at my dress, his eyes lingering on my breasts in a way that had me tightening my fingers into fists. “That is your gown?”
“Yes, and I’ve asked you once to stop staring at my boobs. Keep it up and I’ll make you one very sorry little cowpoke.”
His gaze shifted up to mine, genuine confusion visible in his pale eyes. “You speak words that I do not know, and yet my grasp of English is excellent. What is a cowpoke?”
“It’s someone who’s going to be sorry if he doesn’t stop staring at my breasts.”
His gaze flickered straight back to my boobs. “Why? You present them for male appreciation, do you not?”
I looked down, found the first button on my sundress had slipped open, and hastily rebuttoned it. “No, I wore this dress because it was hot and I wanted to stay cool while I… I…” I frowned again as I tried to concentrate. Vague images seemed to flicker just out of the range of my vision, dark, fleeting images. “I can almost see it.”
“Your breasts? You will if you undo those buttons again.” His gaze was frankly appreciative, but I had learned my lesson. I crossed my arms over my boobs, giving him a quick glare.
“No.” I turned my attention inward again. “It’s just…there. I can almost see it. I was doing something important, something…profound.”
Trees flashed passed my unseeing eyes, trees that were first richly green, then inky black in the night, the tips of their pine needles kissed by sunlight and moonlight alike. And something else hovered just beyond my awareness, something big, something important that I could almost reach out and touch….
“The swirly thing!” I exclaimed, seeing it again when it came into mental focus, the blue-white light twisting and turning back upon itself in that strange fashion. “I was taking pictures of it, and of the creepy forest, and I put my hand through the swirly thing….”
I remembered again the feeling of static in the air when I leaned forward into the twisting light. I swayed, suddenly as light-headed as when I had fallen through the strange smoky object, but this time when I pitched forward, I fell right onto a warm, hard, very solid shape.
One who smelled faintly of lemon, leather, and something slightly earthy that had me turning my head into his neck in an attempt to capture more of it. A sudden urge flared to life in me, one that swept through my blood, making it impossible to resist. Before I could even weigh the consequences of my action, I opened my mouth and gently bit the tendon in Nikola’s neck.
It was as if I’d lit a match to a bonfire. He froze for a moment, and I knew I’d shocked him, knew I was guilty of a far greater form of harassment than merely ogling my breasts, but before I could do so much as to pull away from him, I was on my back on the bed, Nikola covering my front, his eyes darkening even as I stared in complete astonishment. He didn’t say anything, just dipped his head down until his lips burned a brand on my neck.
I was so shocked by what I’d done, I didn’t think to push him off me so I could apologize. On the contrary, I slid my hands up his arms, my legs moving restlessly as his weight made me sink into the soft mattress of the bed. All sorts of wickedly naughty erotic images danced in my head as his teeth scraped on my neck. I knew he was going to give me a love bite in return, knew I should stop it by apologizing for biting him, knew I should get far, far away from him, but apparently my brain had ceased to function, because the second his teeth bit my flesh, I arched back against him, writhing in ecstasy.
“Oh my god, do you know how to do this,” I moaned, clutching his hair and squirming at the sensation of his mouth on my neck. My entire body seemed to be made of fire. “But really, I suppose…oh, lord, yes… I suppose we should stop because this really is way over the line, not that I’m blameless since I bit you first, and dear god, you’re not going to stop, are you?”
He pulled back from me, his eyes now a pure sapphire blue, his lips suddenly holding an unholy fascination for me. They were red, as if he’d been kissing me, all gently curved lines, and so enticing I almost pulled him back down onto me.
A morsel of common sense remained to me, however, and I’m proud to say that even in the full onset of a massive lust, I managed to keep from kissing the breath out of him.
“I must stop, or you would die,” he said in answer to my question, giving me an odd look before sliding off me.
For a few seconds I lay in a boneless, quivering mass of want and need and too many other emotions to untangle. “Well, that was probably the best hickey I’ve ever had, but I don’t think it would have killed me.”
He frowned as I sat up, rebuttoning the top button of my dress, which had popped open yet again. “I do not know this word ‘hickey,’ either.”
“It means a love bite. Kind of a passionate one. Look, I’m sorry I bit you. I don’t know what possessed me. I’m not at all a bitey sort of woman, and especially not with strangers. I’m mortified that I was just yelling at you about ogling me and then I went and bit you—”
“I enjoyed it. No one has ever bitten me before, not even my wife. She was always afraid to. She was afraid she would become like me.”
A blush unlike any other washed up from my chest, burning my face with shame. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know you were married. There’s no excuse for my behavior—”
“I am widowed. My wife died several years ago.” He eyed me as I put my hands on my blazing cheeks. “If you are not a whore, as you claim you are not, then who are you?”
“I’m just me,” I said with a little frustrated gesture. “I’m a former secretary. I like photography and traveling, although I haven’t done much of either. I’m spending the summer in St. Andras with my cousin Gretl
. And I don’t normally bite men, especially strange men, and really especially not men who are as handsome as you are. So no, I’m not a whore, although I admit that after what I did to you, you’d be justified in questioning that statement.” I couldn’t stop reliving the feel of his mouth on my neck. It was the most sensual thing I’d ever felt.
It will only get better.
I froze, a dull feeling of worry filling my gut. What had I done to myself that I was hearing voices?
“I told you that I enjoyed it. You will cease blushing over it. Who were you running from?”
“No one. At least, I don’t think I was.” I stopped worrying about having to go to the hospital for CAT scans and the like, and tried to remember what happened after I had fallen near the twisty light.
“Not near it…through it,” I said aloud, my eyes widening as the memory came flooding back to me of the daytime that had turned to night, of a dirt road where a paved one should have been, and of a carriage and horses looming up out of the night as I raced toward the town and safety.
A horrible, horrible idea started to dawn in the dim recesses of my brain, something so fantastic that I didn’t even want to consider it.
“Through what?” Nikola held out a hand for me, and without thinking, I took it, allowing him to pull me to my feet. I stared at him, my brain seizing up and refusing to process the idea.
“It was… I don’t know what it was. A big swirly thing in the middle of the woods. Made up of light. I know this is going to sound really odd, but what’s today’s date?”
“Woods? What wooded area? Near here?”
“I don’t know where here is, so I couldn’t say. It’s the place that all the people in St. Andras say is haunted. It’s like halfway up the hill to the ruined castle. You didn’t answer me about the date.”
“Andras Castle is not a ruin,” he said, his fingers still holding mine. “The east wing needs some repairs, but I will attend to them now that I have returned from settling my son at university in Heidelberg.”
A Tale of Two Vampires Page 6
