After Midnight

by Teresa Medeiros

  On the night she arrived, Wilbury had informed her that his master had been very explicit in his instructions: Miss Caroline Cabot is to be housed in the north tower. As Caroline reached the other side of the bridge and began to climb the steps to the south tower, she tried not to think about the dark implications of the butler’s words. Tried not to think about how easy it would be for the occupants of the two towers to conduct a torrid liaison with no one else in the castle the wiser. Kane’s request had probably been utterly innocent. After all, she had witnessed the frantic exertions of the servants today. Perhaps at the time of their arrival, the north tower had been one of only a few chambers fit for habitation.

  She soon found herself standing outside a pair of French doors nearly identical to her own. She cupped her hands around her face and tried to peer inside, but heavy drapes veiled the glass. She glanced over her shoulder. Although the sun hadn’t completely finished its descent, the stars were already beginning to twinkle against the indigo palette of the eastern sky.

  She couldn’t afford to linger much longer. As she closed her icy fingers around the brass handle of the door, she wondered if Kane had heeded his own counsel and bolted his doors against the wind. If he had, she would have no choice but to go creeping back to her own bedchamber where she would spend one more night in an agony of uncertainty.

  Mustering her foundering courage, she turned the handle and gave the door a gentle shove. It swung open without so much as a creak of protest, inviting her into the viscount’s shadowy lair.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Caroline slipped into the tower’s inner sanctum, easing the door shut behind her. Her heart felt as if it was pounding loud enough to wake the dead. She winced, wishing the unfortunate thought away.

  She hesitated, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Although plush velvet drapes had been drawn over every window, the chamber hadn’t been abandoned to complete darkness. A single wax taper was burning low in an iron sconce fixed to the wall on the far side of the tower.

  As the shadows slowly retreated, she found her gaze riveted by the piece of furniture that dominated the room. To her keen relief, it wasn’t a closed coffin on a marble dais, but a towering mahogany four-poster, similar to her own but festooned with hangings of ruby silk. Those hangings were drawn, shrouding the bed in mystery.

  She inched forward, nearly stumbling over the clawed foot of another piece of furniture situated near the foot of the bed. Its tall, slender form was also draped in silk. She was lifting a corner of the stuff, determined to peek beneath, when she heard the distinct rustle of something stirring behind the bed hangings.

  She whirled around, her last secret hope that the bed might be empty dashed. Reaching into the pocket of her skirt, she curled her trembling fingers around the stake. Feeling as if her feet were mired in quicksand, she crept to the side of the bed closest to the candle. Her fingers gliding over the silk, she eased back the bed’s curtain to expose its occupant.

  Instead of lying neatly on his back with his arms folded over his chest in corpselike repose, Adrian Kane was sprawled on his stomach among the red silk sheets. The sleek silk had ridden dangerously low on his lean hips, exposing the sculpted planes of his back and shoulders and making it impossible to tell what he wore beneath the sheet—if anything.

  Caroline jerked her wandering gaze back to his face, swallowing to combat the sudden dryness of her mouth.

  He slept with his face turned toward the gentle glow of the candle, the generous sweep of his lashes brushing his cheeks. Since they were edged in gilt, Caroline had never before realized just how long and luxuriant they were. Sleep had erased the strain that so often furrowed his brow and eased the weight of responsibility he always seemed to carry on his broad shoulders. With his thick hair tousled and his lips slightly parted, she could almost catch a glimpse of the boy he had been.

  As a decidedly mortal snore escaped those lips, Caroline shook her head, overcome by a swell of tenderness. She had come here to prove once and for all that he was simply a man. Yet all she had done was prove what a fool she was. There was nothing simple about him. Or her feelings for him.

  He hadn’t been deceiving her; she had been deceiving herself. She had insisted upon believing that he posed a threat to her sister when the only danger had been to her own heart. As long as she could cling to the ridiculous notion that he might be a vampire, she didn’t have to let him go.

  Caroline closed her eyes for a moment, struggling to compose herself. When she opened them, they were still stinging, but dry.

  She knew she should go, but she couldn’t move. She might never again have the chance to draw near to him in the dark, to watch him sleep and to wonder, for one selfish moment, if he was dreaming of her.

  One touch.

  That was all she would allow herself. Then she would creep away as silently as she’d come and leave him to his dreams. She would return to her chamber and gather all of her strength so that when he came knocking at her door to ask for Vivienne’s hand, she would be able to welcome him as the brother he would soon become.

  Caroline stretched out her hand, keenly aware that this was no portrait, but flesh and blood, seething with heat and strength and life.

  One second her fingertips were grazing the warm golden satin of his back, the next she was flat on her back on the feather tick, both of her wrists manacled above her head in one of his hands, his other hand wrapped around the slender column of her throat.

  She blinked up at him, mesmerized by the feral glitter of his eyes. Every breath was a struggle, but she couldn’t tell if that was from being imprisoned beneath his weight or from inhaling the intoxicating aroma of his sleep-warmed flesh. Added to the usual mix of sandalwood and bay rum was a new and even more potent spice—danger.

  Recognition slowly dawned in his eyes, leaving them wary and heavy-lidded. His grip on her wrists and her throat softened, yet still he made no move to free her.

  She wasn’t sure she could have fled if he had. A paralyzing languor seemed to have claimed her limbs, slowing time to a waltz measured by each throbbing beat of her heart. She was keenly aware of the weight of him, the heat of him, the well-muscled length of him pinning her to the mattress. Even in her innocence, Caroline recognized that the hand at her throat was by no means the greatest threat to her.

  “Don’t,” she whispered as she watched his gaze drift to her lips. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t draw in a single shuddering breath that wasn’t filled with the musky heat of his desire. “Please don’t…”

  Even as she choked out the words, she knew it was too late. Knew it had been too late from the first moment their eyes had met, their lips had touched.

  His hand slid from her throat to her cheek. He seized her gaze with his own, holding it captive as surely as the rest of her. The callused pad of his thumb played over the softness of her lips, exploring their yielding contours with a tenderness that threatened to undo her.

  Then his head was there, blocking out the last of the candlelight as he brought his mouth down on hers. His lips moved over hers, gently but firmly dragging them apart, rendering her utterly vulnerable to the smoky heat of his tongue sweeping through her mouth, claiming both it and her heart for his own. He used that tongue to woo, to cajole, to make wordless promises he could never hope to keep.

  Caroline couldn’t have said how her hands got free. She only knew that suddenly they were tangling in his hair, curling around his nape, drawing him even deeper into the kiss, into her.

  Too late, she realized his hand was free as well. Free to sift through the silk of her hair until it slipped from its pins to glide over his fingers. Free to skate down her satiny skin to the delicate hollow at the base of her throat. Free to graze the gentle swell of her breast through the thin cambric of her bodice. She wasn’t prepared for the erotic shock of his warm fingers delving beneath the fabric of both bodice and corset, bringing them skin-to-skin. His hand curled around her breast, his thumb fli
cking back and forth over her quickening nipple with exquisite care, sending tiny shockwaves of pleasure deep into her womb. Although she was the one dying from delight, he groaned as if in mortal agony.

  For six years she had denied herself every pleasure. Now she felt as if she was drowning in it, sinking deeper into its velvety embrace with each sigh, each kiss, each deft stroke of his fingertips against her flesh. When his hand skated lower, skimming over the curve of her belly, tracing the elegant arch of her hipbone, she simply tipped her head back, drinking even more deeply of the forbidden nectar he was offering her.

  He tasted like warm sugar biscuits on a snowy Christmas morning; chilled strawberries and cream on a sultry summer afternoon; steaming apple cider on a crisp autumn evening. For the first time since she’d lost her parents, it was as if all of the empty places inside of her were being filled and she would never have to go to bed hungry again.

  As if determined to fill her everywhere, he parted her limp thighs with his knee, bringing it to bear against the warm hollow between her legs with just enough pressure to make her gasp into his mouth and arch off the bed. She didn’t know what he was doing to her. She only knew that she wanted more of it.

  More of him.

  When he dragged his mouth from hers, she was the one to moan in protest. But her moans melted to sighs as he pressed feather-soft kisses against the corner of her mouth, the delicate curve of her jaw, the downy skin beneath her ear.

  She arched her neck, unable to resist the softness of his lips searching for the pulse in her throat. A pulse thundering out of control, fluttering as if it were a baby bird cupped in the palm of his hand.

  Lost in a daze of delight, she felt the scrape of his teeth an instant before he gave the tender flesh a sharp nip.

  “Ow!” Her eyes flew open. Clapping a hand to her stinging throat, she glared up at him in wide-eyed indignation. “You bit me!”

  He glared right back at her, his eyes glittering like exotic gemstones in the candlelight. “And why not? That’s what you expected me to do, isn’t it?” He held up the stake he had pilfered from the pocket of her skirt while she had been drifting mindlessly on a sea of pleasure. “If not, you wouldn’t have brought this to my bed.”

  Caroline swallowed hard, her guilty gaze darting from the stake to his face. “I don’t suppose you’d believe that I was going to catch up on some needlework?”

  “What were you going to do? Embroider ‘Bless Our Elves’ over my heart?” Snorting in derision, he tossed the stake on her chest and rolled off of her. Jerking open the silk hangings, he slipped out of the bed.

  Caroline sat up, her jaw dropping as she realized what he’d been wearing beneath the sheet.

  Not a stitch.

  From behind, he resembled Michelangelo’s David brought to glorious life, every sinew and muscle sculpted with loving hands by a master artist. He padded across the room with such unself-conscious masculine grace that she forgot to look away until after he’d stepped behind a gilded dressing screen.

  Flushing to the tips of her toes, she ducked her head. “You can hardly blame me for believing the worst of you. It’s not as if you’ve ever tried to deny those ugly things the gossips say about you behind your back.”

  His clipped voice came from behind the screen. “I thought you were the one who didn’t believe in heeding idle gossip.”

  “I have no choice but to heed it as long as you’re courting my sister!”

  He reappeared, having hastily dragged on a pair of charcoal-colored breeches. Her gaze was drawn to his hands as he struggled to secure the buttons of the front flap. Despite their deftness, he seemed to be having an undue amount of difficulty. “Until tonight, had I ever given you any reason to believe that my intentions toward your sister were anything less than honorable?”

  Yes! Caroline wanted to cry. When you kissed me in Vauxhall Gardens as if I was the only woman you would ever love. But she held her tongue. Because he hadn’t kissed her. She had kissed him. “Your intentions toward my sister might be above reproach, but your intentions toward me just now were hardly innocent.”

  He jerked on a rumpled shirt and began to fasten its cloth-covered buttons. “You would have received the same treatment from any man had you gone tumbling into his bed with such reckless abandon when he was half asleep and fully aroused.”

  Caroline’s flush deepened, but Kane didn’t see it. For the first time since they’d met, his direct gaze had faltered. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to look at her.

  Beginning to suspect that he was lying not only to her, but to himself as well, she retorted, “I didn’t tumble into your bed. I was tossed.”

  “And just what was I supposed to do? It’s not every night that a woman sneaks into my bedchamber fully prepared to murder me in my sleep.” Shaking his head, he raked a hand through his already disheveled hair. “What in God’s name were you thinking? If one of the servants had seen you slip in here, your reputation would have been destroyed.”

  “I made sure that no one saw me,” she told him.

  “Then you’re even more foolish than I thought.” His voice lowered to a dangerous note as he moved toward the bed with the inexorable grace of some large jungle cat.

  Caroline scrambled to her feet to face him, her hair slipping half out of its pins, but her chin held high. Following the mocking direction of his gaze, she slipped the stake back into the pocket of her skirt. “I didn’t come here tonight to murder you. I came here to find out the truth once and for all. And I’m not going anywhere until I get it.” She took a deep breath, determined not to squeak when she finally said the words out loud. “Are you or are you not a vampire?”

  She startled him into stopping a scant foot away from her. He cocked his head to the side to study her. “You never cease to surprise me. At our first meeting, I would have sworn you were far too practical to believe in such creatures.”

  She shrugged. “Nobody denies the existence of Vlad the Impaler or Elizabeth Bathory, the notorious Countess of Transylvania who used to hang the village virgins upside down and slit their throats so she could drink their blood to maintain her eternal youth.”

  The silky note in his voice deepened. “I can assure you, Miss Cabot, that I have far more enjoyable uses for virgins.”

  Although her fair coloring betrayed her with another blush, she chose to ignore the deliberate taunt. “You can’t deny that you have the instincts of a born killer. You had me flat on my back with your hand at my throat before I could so much as draw breath to scream.”

  Arching one eyebrow, he said, “As I recall, you weren’t struggling very hard.” He reached to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “One would have almost sworn that escape was the last thing on your mind.”

  The barest brush of his fingertips against the sensitive skin behind her ear made her shiver with longing.

  He drew his hand back as if he, too, was shaken by the contact. “So is that what you believe I am? A ‘born killer’?”

  “I don’t know what you are,” she confessed, her voice beginning to tremble with emotion. “I only know that from the first moment I laid eyes on you, I could think of nothing—and no one—else. I know that every time you walk into a room, I feel like my corset stays are too tight and I can’t breathe. I know that I couldn’t possibly be having such shameful thoughts and dreams about a man who is practically my sister’s betrothed if he hadn’t cast some sort of wicked spell on me!”

  “The first time we met, you told me that only the ‘weak-willed’ were in danger of succumbing to my bidding.”

  A despairing laugh escaped her. “Then my will must be far weaker than I realized.”

  “If that’s true, then what would happen at this very moment if I commanded you to come into my arms?” He moved close enough for her to feel the raw heat radiating from his body, smell the clean masculine musk of his skin, yet still he did not touch her. “Would you be able to resist if I ordered you to put your hands on me? To kiss me?”
His voice softened on a husky note. “To love me?”

  Caroline tried to turn away from him, but Kane caught her by the shoulders, forcing her to meet his smoldering gaze. “What if you’re right, Caroline? What if I have cast a spell on you? What if it’s the most inescapable enchantment of all? What if you’re falling in love with me?”

  She shook her head in mute denial, horrified that he had guessed her dark secret. No amount of holy water could wash away such a stain. There was no cure, no remedy, no spell to break. She might as well drive a stake through her own treacherous heart. “You insult me, my lord. I would never do such a thing to Vivienne. I’m not that sort of woman.”

  His grip on her shoulders softened to something dangerously near a caress. “Don’t you think I know what sort of woman you are? You’re the sort of woman who would give up every one of your own dreams just to make one of your sisters’ dreams come true. But perhaps your heart isn’t as scrupulous and self-sacrificing as the rest of you. It might selfishly insist upon having its own way even if you don’t.”

  She gazed up at him, fighting back tears. “Then I suppose it deserves to be broken, doesn’t it?”

  “Not by a man like me,” Kane muttered.

  His expression grim, he retrieved a voluminous cloak from the back of a nearby chair and wrapped it around her shoulders.

  “Where are you taking me?” she demanded as he gripped her upper arm through the cloak and urged her toward the French doors.

  “I’m taking you back to your bedchamber. Unless, of course, you’d rather I ring for one of the servants to escort you?”

  Without waiting for her reply, he yanked open the French doors and swept her into the night. The wind had risen another notch, sending ghostly wisps of clouds skating across the silvery arc of the rising moon.

  “I’ll have you know that I won’t be dismissed this easily,” Caroline insisted even as he hastened her down the steps and onto the bridge. Keenly aware of the dizzying height they were crossing, she stumbled along beside him, already growing breathless from the effort of keeping pace with his long strides. “If you’re not a vampire, I want to know why you sleep all day and refuse to show yourself in the sunlight. I want to know why your ancestors all look exactly like you. I want to know why you’re willing to let society—and me—believe the worst of you instead of defending yourself against their accusations. And I want to know why there isn’t a single mirror in this entire blasted castle!”