by kimberly
Anlese Blackthorne's funeral was a solemn one.
Julienne cast a glance to the sky as she followed the small procession that would see Anlese's coffin borne to the Blackthorne family crypt. Clouds as black as the dress she wore hung overhead, pregnant with water, threatening the Earth with unwelcome rain. She felt the ominous presence of the storm, mirroring the heaviness that seemed to have settled in her soul.
A rusted iron fence of gothic scrollwork surrounded the cemetery. It was about a quarter of a mile from the manor on a cultivated piece of land. Overgrown grass and trees thrived in the abode of the dead and gave it an air of abandonment. Tombstones, large and elaborate, small and insignificant, were scattered helter-skelter with no symmetry. The markers of the long-gone and buried were overlooked by the looming presence of a huge stone crypt, guarding forever only those of direct Blackthorne blood. A place for the dead, the cemetery was peaceful and serene. It held no malevolence for the living. It knew it would someday claim them all--when the touch of the Reaper reached forth to cut down life in its tracks.
Julienne cast a baleful look at the angry sky. At the cemetery's entrance, the massive statue of an angel held aloft a fiery sword, heralding the deceased toward their final resting place. Around the cemetery, the faces of chubby cherubs and serene seraphs looked down on their eternal domain from high stone pedestals, sunken eyes gazing mindlessly. She rubbed the goose bumps from her arms. A person could get paranoid being stared down by the many pairs of suspicious eyes envying the living.
I don't like this. All at once, the cemetery was not so peaceful or calm. A chill was settling over the afternoon as the wind gusted, rustling the limbs of the trees. The sound of the leaves rubbing together made an eerie noise, like the whispers of her long-dead ancestors.
She whimpered softly, unsure why fear began to fill her, a cold dread building inside her gut. The oppressiveness of the cemetery's atmosphere was beginning to overwhelm her. The fear of death clutched at her throat as she realized that one day she, too, would die. These thoughts caused her heart to beat wildly in her chest. Though the day was a cool one, she was drenched in perspiration. Fear. The ugly little demon was back with a vengeance, gnawing at her, shredding her insides with sharp teeth. Death. Death. Death, it chanted, until the words became embedded in her skull, engraved into her very bone. It'll get you, take you, and all you'll end up as is fodder to feed the maggots, it jeered.
She wiped her sweating brow, casting a quick look toward Morgan. He stood beside Melissa, offering his handkerchief when the black woman sniffled softly.
"I hate this." Julienne pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, failing to staunch her tears.
"These things are never easy." Danielle Yames sobbed, holding Julienne's arm, lending moral as well as physical support, for it seemed to Julienne that all strength had deserted her. She wished Morgan were holding her, comforting her, but he was keeping his distance.
Death is ugly, she fumed. She believed with all her heart that life was a cheat. One had youth, strength, vitality, but within the space of a very few decades, it could be taken away through illness, accident, or the inevitable process of aging. How short a person's lifespan was. It wasn't the first time she envied Morgan, the way he moved through time untouched. I want it for myself. I want to be with him. Wherever he might go. She didn't want to be parted from him--ever.
Her mind awhirl, Julienne looked to the pallbearers: Tobias Greenwood, Georges Losch and four other men who helped to keep the grounds. She shivered as they came within sight of the crypt, where a place had been prepared. Anlese had requested their service, and they were proud to give it. The old woman's coffin was a simple one, displaying none of the grandeur she'd lived in. No flowers adorned it, nor were any to be found in the mausoleum. Anlese had believed flowers were for the living. She would have none cut down to adorn the sepulcher that the coffin would be slid into, a dark space soon to be sealed with a marble slab. It would be simply marked with a plaque bearing her name, the date she had been born into this world and the day she'd left it.
The service was short, attended by a local priest who read a nondenominational prayer for the dead. Anlese had been a woman of a religion recognized by no churches. However, appearances must be maintained to the end. No members of the township were invited. Indeed, notice of Anlese's death had yet to appear in the newspapers--she'd wanted a dignified funeral attended by only those closest to her.
Like a well-oiled machine, Blackthorne money had paved the way for local officials to hurry the death certificate and the filing of the will. Morgan put his employees into play, directing them like a chess master moving the pieces. Nobody could penetrate his wall of attorneys. Even the local sheriff owed him, for Blackthorne money had paid the lawman's gambling debts. Morgan Saint-Evanston was very good at ferreting out people's secrets, zeroing in on their weaknesses--ambushing when moral and physical resistance was at its lowest. Indeed, he knew human nature and the human spirit better than any, how to enhance it, exploit it, or destroy it. Many owed him. None would betray him.
But that was the way he operated, and the way he wanted it. People knew of him, but they did not truly know him. Like a shadow eradicated by the morning sun, he could vanish in a moment, moving in stealth though a large network dedicated to nothing else but preserving his secrets. It was said that people could keep a secret only if all but one were dead. Morgan's people kept his because he engendered fear in them. That was the core of his power and he used it to his every advantage. That he seemed to fear nothing, have nothing to lose, intimidated people--and who wouldn't tremble when struck by his laser-beam stare and whiplash tongue?
So numb that she could barely comprehend the priest's words, Julienne stared at him through empty, unseeing eyes. She realized his prayers were meaningless. Lip service, she told herself. Nothing more, nothing less. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Does life mean nothing more than this, a goddamned hole in the wall?
Her mind turned to the night her grandmother had passed away. She was still hazy about the details, but she was fighting to remember everything, fighting because it was so very important. She must remember.
She'd come to consciousness slowly, waking hours after the rite in her own bed. She was alone, cloaked in darkness, fever searing her skin, seeming to scorch clear to the bone. Dizziness washed over her, her empty stomach spasmed with dry heaves. She felt bruised, flaccid and diseased. Her hand ached where Morgan had cut, the white scar burning under her skin. Somewhere in the labyrinth of her mind she began to recall the visions Anlese had shown her, then, later, the ritual he'd performed. Bits and pieces gradually filtered back into memory as if breaking the crest of a high mountain.
The priest's voice droned on, becoming nothing more than a buzz in her head, like a gnat hovering at her ear.
Her whole world, the one that should have been a delightful one, was turning to shit in her hands. Hell was truly upon her. When Morgan left she would be a wealthy woman, heiress of an heritage stretching back generations. Yet she would have no happiness. Alone, she would mourn the loss of the two people who had come to mean so much in her life.
Julienne put her hands to her face to hide the tears threatening to fall anew. She believed she had successfully repressed her feelings, but the wetness on her cheeks proved her sadly misled.
Needing to see Morgan again, knowing he was near, she lifted her head, looked across the crypt. Like the good Irishman he was, he'd hit the bottle the night of Anlese's death and had only stopped during the funeral service.
She grimaced. He's drinking again. He seemed to want to blot out that night as much as she wanted to remember it.
As if he could read her mind, his eyes lifted and his gaze found hers.
Does our joining mean nothing? she raged in impotent silence, wanting to shout the words at him. We're mated, yet he refuses to recognize it. Why? Is it because I'm not good enough?
He shook his head slowly and turned his face away. No, he seemed to say. I
t means nothing.
* * *
Body aching, eyes scratchy with fatigue, Julienne stepped out of the shower. She'd stood under the stream for more than an hour, until the water grew warm, then cold. Shivering, she quickly dried herself, putting on a pair of panties and a long robe, wishing now that she'd chosen a sensible heavy housecoat instead of a sheer, sexy one. Brushing her teeth, then combing her hair into a twist at the nape of her neck, she opened the door and padded barefoot into the bedroom, eager to climb into her bed, crawl under the warm covers.
Seeing a fire burning in the fireplace, she paused. The fire hadn't been lit when she'd closed the bathroom door. The room was quiet, lights dimmed. Suddenly the sharp scent of cloves tickled her nostrils and she knew she was not alone.
Morgan was present.
He sat in a chair dressed in shadows, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. A bottle of scotch rested at his elbow, barely touched. It was clear he had come prepared to wait. Seeing him, an ache knotted in the back of her throat, threatening to steal away her breath. She could feel his gaze touching her, exploring her visually as his hands had once done. She blushed at the silent intimacy that passed between them, knew what he wanted of her, that he had come to take her. Heart pounding, she decided without thinking that tonight he would give her what she desired--or she'd turn him away. Saying nothing, she simply stared at him, waiting.
After what seemed an eternity, he finished his cigarette, then drained the last of his drink before he rose.
"Julienne," he breathed, a hoarse whisper that conveyed his need for her, but also his anger and rebellion for being weak enough to come to her tonight.
"I didn't expect to see you," she said, thinking of the wondrous and primitive sensations his hands stirred in her when he touched her skin.
"I had to come," he replied in a low, beleaguered tone. With a desperate, angry sound, he came to her, his mouth claiming hers. Her lips parted willingly under the searching invasion of his tongue. She tasted sweet cloves and the scotch he'd consumed. Her hands rose to encircle his neck even as his claimed her waist, pulling her to his hard, forbidding frame. Her body arched reflexively as one of his hands sought, then fastened over her silk-covered breast, teasing the erect nipple under the material. His mouth left hers and he nipped with gentle teeth at the soft flesh of her neck.
"You have bewitched me, woman," he breathed.
"I've been trying." Julienne sighed, at first tempted to give in to her need. She wanted to rip off her robe, surrender to the gratifying hunger to be naked to this man's touch. But if she did, she knew he would not accept his own pleasure. He would take her, use her, then leave her, quivering and unsatisfied.
Morgan kissed her again, tugging impatiently at her robe, his hand sliding over the flat plane of her belly, toward her Venus mound, finding the soft V between her legs. He began to explore, his fingers sliding aside her panties to probe her depth.
I haven't got the will to try and fight him, she thought wildly, almost forgetting her resolve. I want him too much.
Putting her hands on his chest, she regretfully squirmed free of his hold. "No," she gulped. "Not this way, Morgan."
Eyes glittering with a feral craving, he reached for her, but she fended off his hands, pulling her robe tighter around her body, wishing it wasn't so sheer. The tips of her erect nipples rubbed against the material, aching for his lips.
"Why not?" he demanded in a raw voice. The set of his jaw was forbidding, even frightening. For a moment she believed he'd storm out in anger.
Julienne lifted a single finger to his lips to silence him. "I'm not refusing you," she soothed. "But…I'm making a demand. Tonight, you can make love to me completely…" She paused, giving him time to gather the gist of her words.
"Or?" he grated through nearly clenched teeth.
"Or you can leave and go jack yourself off for satisfaction. I'm tired of not having you, Morgan. I need you. All of you."
There was a long interval in which it seemed to Julienne that the whole world stopped spinning on its axis. She knew there were powerful opposing forces raging inside Morgan Saint-Evanston. She selfishly hoped her words hadn't driven him away. In less than one week, he'd be leaving. What little time they had left, she wanted every moment of it.
"You know what is between us," he began.
She nodded. "Anlese told me you saved my life the night I first came here." Her voice wavered, then cracked. "You used your blood to strengthen me. And Grandmother used that to bind us together in a…a…mating."
"It is not a complete joining," he protested. "It can still be broken."
"Unless we make love," she breathed, blushing. Her trembling legs were barely able to support her weight. She wasn't cold anymore.
"Yes." His eyes were a hot, tarry pool. It was clear his feelings were the same. His ferocious gaze held hers, stealing her breath with its intensity.
"Would it be so bad?" She offered a weak, uncertain smile. "You're going to leave here soon. Even if we were lovers, how could it affect you? It won't be a forever thing. I'm only human…"
"You do not understand," he said. "For my kind, a blood mating is forever. It does not end with death. Just going away would not end it."
It's a forever thing, the words echoed in her mind. I want that. I want forever with this man.
"I should not have come tonight." He took one step back, then another.
"You had to." She walked forward until she found herself standing before him, barely aware of her own body's movements. Her hand lifted and she traced a path down his chest, eliciting a soft grunt from him when she moved lower, fingers closing teasingly around his throbbing genitals. "We can't help ourselves."
"This would be so wrong between us," he rumbled, his dark eyes searching hers.
"I'm willing to take the chance of being your mate."
"When I leave, I will not come back," he warned.
"I don't care." Julienne leaned her body into his, offering her mouth, her tongue teasingly moistening her full lips. Her fingers on his shoulders were tight, her grip suggestive.
Taking her hands, Morgan lifted them to curl around his neck, even as his own arms encircled her waist, pulling her body close until nothing separated them except the thin robe she wore. He loosened her hair, letting it cascade down around her shoulders in damp ringlets. Freshly washed, it smelled of pears.
"If I do not leave," Morgan slid his hands along her back, tracing the lines of her slender form, "I will have you."
"You're not leaving." She felt tingling warmth spread though her body, strangling her with the nearness of him; it was becoming difficult for her to breathe. It was impossible not to sense the static in the air, the scent of the heat generated between them.
"I was not going to." He kissed her passionately, his mouth reclaiming hers with a hunger she had not expected.
Julienne sighed with deep desire, as his fingers traveled her body; seeking, finding, exploring every inch of her through the silken material. Gently, he brushed the robe from her body, first untying the sash holding it in place around her waist, then letting his hands glide down her shoulders. The silky material pooled around her feet in a soft hush. She willingly molded her body to his, feeling his hardness against her.
He found her flawless breasts, kneading them gently, massaging her sensitive nipples until they throbbed. Julienne grasped a handful of his thick hair and pulled him to her breast in wanton demand. His arm encircled her waist, bending her back so his mouth could claim one pink nipple, tracing it round and round with his tongue, sending shafts of wonderful torment speeding through her. When he'd devoured one sufficiently, he turned his attention to the other. Nipping, flicking, teasing the aching nubbin, he made it clear he intended to take his time.
After a long moment, he drew away, lifting her into his arms with the ease of a mother cradling a child. He carried, then gently lowered her to the bed before he stretched out beside her, still fully clothed.
Julienne l
aughed. "This won't do." She rose to straddle him, playfully pushing his seeking hands away from her flat belly. She worked the buttons of his shirt in an unhurried, teasing manner, her hands moving possessively when she parted the material, at long last feeling his skin under her palms. She visually explored his nakedness.
His chest was a mass of slashes and a jagged scar ran along his collarbone. Another gashed down his shoulder. Yet a third ripped through his abdomen, snaking down past the waistband of his pants, still others marring his stomach and chest--all deep, long and potentially lethal when they were live wounds. Unable to stay her frown, she traced each scar with curious fingers.
These aren't self-inflicted. These were from leading a life fraught with violence and danger.
"You've had a hard life," she remarked, swallowing the mammoth lump forming in her throat, threatening to steal her breath, ruin the moment building between them. She sensed he did not want, nor would he welcome, her pity. Why say anything? she asked herself, running her hands over his broad chest, circling one of his ruddy nipples with an exploring finger. He knows they're there.
Morgan laughed, low in his throat, a warm resonant sound she didn't expect. "Mmmm…very hard." He caught her hands in his, halting her expedition, for they were traveling toward the buttons of his slacks. She smiled mischievously.
"I'm not going to force you, Morgan," she grinned, "but I won't beg you either."
Eyes strangely gentle on her face, he held her fingers in a loose hold. She could break away any time.
"Are you sure?"
Julienne nodded. "Are you sure?" She searched his face for any signs of reluctance, and found none. Indeed, if he had any doubts, his body betrayed him. She could feel the heat of his penis straining against the cruel material keeping their bodies apart.
No answer was needed between them.
Shifting lower, she sought his pulsing shaft, unbuttoning his pants with desperate hands, enjoying his torment as he waited for her to free him. He groaned when she wrapped eager fingers around the length of his erection. A fevered groan broke from his throat when she clasped him in her fist and flicked her tongue against the engorged tip. She began to move her hand up and down in a slow, tight motion. Morgan made sounds like a man in sheer delirium when she added the wet warmth of her mouth.
