The verbal blow was devastating, and meant to be. She had expected something of the kind, however, so did not permit him to see her flinch. Her eyes clear, her tone acid-edged, she said, “It's just as well then, don't you think, that I'm none of those things?”
He tested that declaration, accepted it. When he spoke it was in answer to her thought rather than her words. “You are feeling combative? This is a duel no one can win, a challenge I must refuse. If you will change your clothes again, I will take you home to your aunt.”
“Change?” she said with a lifted brow. “Oh, but I believe I've grown fond of this ensemble; it makes me feel quite—regal. In any case, it was chosen especially for me and I am convinced that it flatters.”
“Keep it, then,” he said shortly. “Shall we go?”
He was anxious to be rid of her. That was promising.
“You know,” she said judiciously, “I don't think we shall. All these exertions have made me hungry, and it would be shameful to waste the midnight supper you so thoughtfully ordered.”
He watched her for long, unblinking moments before he said in pleasantly conversational tones, “I could send you on a whirlwind.”
“No doubt,” she answered at once. “Then who would be throwing a—what was the phrase? Oh, yes, a temper tantrum of the elements?”
“Carita—”
The word, ragged at the edges, ground to a halt. He looked down at his hand that was curled into a fist. By slow degrees he opened it, forced a gesture of graceful acquiescence. “Yes. Well. By all means let us be adult and mannerly and civilized, at least in so far as we are able. You are hungry. So am I. Shall we dine?”
“Sup,” she corrected him. “It's too late for anything else.” She paused, watching him, but if he recognized the allusion to his own declaration, he did not show it.
They took their places at the table. Polite to a fault, stiff with decorum, they began their meal. Renfrey drank too much. It did not make him drunk, of course, but did incline him to morose self-judgment.
He should have forced her to go. She might have fought him, but he had no doubt that he could have prevailed. To be constrained to sit and watch her, knowing that he had only to reach out his hand for her to come to him, was indescribable torture. It was perverse of him to be grateful for every minute of it.
He loved the proud tilt of her chin, the determined set of her lips, the light of battle in the deep and rich sea-blue of her eyes. She had not given up; he knew that. He must and would counter every wile and stratagem she concocted, still he saluted her fiery spirit. Even as it gave him cold chills.
By all the saints of this hallowed eve, but he wanted her. She knew it, because he himself had told her. In exerting himself to convince her that the glory of loving was possible between them, he had succeeded far too well. Now he was determined to convince her otherwise, and all her powers were arrayed against him.
He had, ordinarily, a penchant for irony. This particular incidence of it did not entertain him.
Still, this time could be used for the accumulation of memories. The gleam of the candlelight on her skin. The imperious sweetness of her smile. The perfection of the gown of his choosing. He would not remember, if he could help it, the pleasure of dressing her in it.
Mental perception could sometimes be more vivid than bodily experience. Such as the moment when he had embraced her out on the street. That rare accord had, of course, been shared.
He looked up, startled, to find her watching him. She lowered her lashes at once, but he had seen the dazed satisfaction there. She had, for an instant, slipped into his mind as he had penetrated hers. It had felt like a wondrous completion. Something more to guard against.
It was also, he thought, the first foray in the battle. As such, it was an indication of the tactics she might use. He wondered how strong his defenses were against that kind of insidious invasion.
It did not help, of course, to realize that he had shown her the maneuver himself.
There were methods in her repertoire, he discovered, that he had certainly not taught her. The way she drank her wine, wetting her lips with it and licking the drops with small, delicate strokes of the tip of her tongue. The manner in which she curled her fingers around a bread stick, buttered it with care on one end, and then ate it with tender precision. Her deliberate movements as she chose a small ripe peach, rolled it between her hands while breathing the aroma, then bit into it with small, sharp teeth.
Wincing, Renfrey swallowed hard and reached for his wine glass. It tasted, he found, of peach juice and the fresh sweetness of her lips. Damn her.
How had she known? How had she discovered his most fevered fantasies? She was an innocent. Unless.
Unless she was following the lead of his own licentious thoughts and impulses. No one else, ever, had been able to do that to him. He felt the tops of his ears grow hot.
He was—or had meant to be—a gentleman: impassive, correct, forbearing. This was too much. He focused his attention on her peach.
She exclaimed and spat out the next bite that had become a virulent, poisonous green. Screwing up her mouth, she reached for her water glass.
She drank deep, slowed, tilted the glass at a slight angle. A single, pure drop fell from the base of the crystal stem. It caught the candlelight in prism fire as it struck her chest above her décolleté and rolled, unerringly, over the blue-veined curve of her breast and into the shadowed valley between them.
Renfrey's eyes burned as he watched. The inside of his mouth was desiccated, parched for the taste of that life-giving drop of water. He could feel it on his tongue. He could also feel his tongue on her skin, circling the satin firmness of her breasts, tasting the taut nipples. She was a fountain, bounteous, endlessly flowing, life for the taking.
She had done it to him again. Incredibly. Anger smoldered, rising to heat the top of his brain. He glanced at her fingers on the glass, tipped his head a bare inch.
Her hold on the piece of crystal slipped. Water cascaded. The front of her gown was drenched with icy cold wetness.
She gasped, a sound of shock. She reached for her napkin. Stopped.
Her eyes, as she raised them to his own limpid gaze, were bright with fury. An instant later, they turned fluid, piteous yet rueful. “Oh, dear,” she said. “It seems I'll have to change after all.”
It was a fascinating transfiguration. The gown dissolved into a delicate mist, the jewels disappeared. For an instant, there was a glimpse of rose nipples, a narrow span of waist compressed by a miniscule corset, the slender turn of shapely thighs under pantalettes. The vision evolved, became one of sentient ivory nakedness behind drifting folds of tissue silk. Then she was covered by swirling material forming a simple oriental robe of robin's egg blue edged at the low-dipping neckline with the icy sparkle of perfect diamonds.
He should have looked away, but could not find the will. “Mesmerizing,” he said, and meant it. God help him.
Something must be done to counter the effect of her ploy. Hot, he was so hot; he had to cool off. Yes, of course; that should help. He added with false concern as the temperature in the room began to drop precipitously, “But I hope you won't be too chilly in your light draperies.”
She was apt, inconceivably so, in her intuition. And she had no hesitation in the attack.
“It's doubtful I will freeze,” she answered as log fires laid in the marble-faced fireplaces under the mirrors at either end of the room burst into flames. “But a fire is so much more enjoyable on a rainy night. Think how lovely it would be to lie before it, even to make love there to the music of the rain.”
Outside, a slow and steady downpour began. It pattered and drummed into the garden, releasing the fragrances captured there so that they penetrated into the closed house. The rhythm of the rain was hypnotic and infinitely inciting. Renfrey listened in stony silence while he conquered the tightening in his groin.
When he spoke at last, his voice had a much lower note. “Rain as an aphrodisi
ac? To my mind, it has no power unless you can see and hear it without impediment.”
The windows along the far side of the room swung open, along with the doors leading from the vestibule. Chill, wet air swept inside on a gust of wind.
“Very nice,” she said without a shred of truth. “But you derided my storm earlier. Perhaps you have discovered that the elements can be exciting, after all. Who knows what thrilling effects we might create if we join forces.”
Hard on her words, thunder rolled, cracking in the distance with a mighty roar. The wind picked up speed and power. Rain splattered in at the windows and splashed onto the malachite flooring of the vestibule.
He should stop it. He would in a moment, when he could tear his gaze away from her as she sat opposite him with her perfect skin beaded with chill while her face was flushed with angry desire. God, but he did not know whether he wanted most to subdue her with force or with tenderness.
As if in answer to his thought, the wind rose to a tempest. Somewhere a priceless antique vase smashed and scattered across the inlaid floor. The lusters of the chandelier overhead jangled, sending bits of broken crystal sparkling downward. A picture frame bumped against the wall, then fell with a jolting impact.
She wanted him to stop her, he saw, for that would be an admission that she could affect him. She would see, then, what a storm could be with his greater aid.
The wind whipped into the house carrying lashing torrents of rain. The water flooded across the floor, wetting the Turkish carpet and pushing it into crumpled folds. It boiled into the fireplace and doused the leaping flames, extinguishing all warmth. Cold, drenching, it soaked the tablecloth and sent silver rattling to the floor. Carita's wine glass overturned so rainwater-diluted burgundy poured across the table, dripping to the floor like fresh blood.
And the wind and wet molded her oriental robe against her slim form with utmost fidelity, making the silk quite transparent. Renfrey, retrieving his own wine glass, isolated himself from the storm in a protective cocoon of air and leaned back to watch the spectacle.
Carita made a brief, abortive gesture with one hand as if to cover herself, then desisted. Abruptly, her hair came loose and its pins tinkled on the floor like silver bells. The thick lustrous swath of her hair slid downward to become a silver curtain that enticed more than concealed. The wind caught it then. Her smile, as the silver-gold cloud of it blew around her in a wild tangle, grew diabolical.
The cat, drawn up in a bow and hissing, emerged from where he had been begging under the table. He looked at Carita, then streaked for cover beneath a china closet.
“You enjoy nakedness?” she asked in musical tones that carried easily above the clamor. “That seems bizarre under the circumstances, but is easily arranged.”
He felt the cold, wet wind on his bare skin even as he looked down. His coat, shirt and trousers were parting at the seams, falling away to lie in a tailor's puzzle of pieces in the water that washed across the floor. Even his evening shoes disintegrated, along with his braces and underclothing. His watch, chain and fob rattled into his lap. He was left with nothing by way of concealment, or dignity.
Renfrey surged to his feet in a blaze of temper. The table, unbalanced by the rising wind, overturned with a horrendous crash of china and crystal. The broken pieces and dented silver scattered over the floor, spinning into the far corners.
“Oh, by all means,” she shouted at him as she leaped up also and backed away, “destroy this nest of seduction. That's all it is, all it ever was. What a jest, to call it a home. How would someone of your kind know what a home is or what a half-mortal woman might do there, or feel about it? You're only a misfit, an oddity, a mere creature with no more idea of love and home than a beast in the field!”
The bestial Minotaur, half-bull, half-man, came to him, summoned with the rage of denied desire and vanished hope. Its fearsome strength was his, and its brutish instincts. He advanced on her, inflamed, out of control, as intent as ever a mythological being had been on rapine and destruction.
She saw it in his face and alarm sprang into her eyes. Whirling away from him, she sprinted toward the open vestibule and the dark tempest in the courtyard beyond.
She was fleet, but he was faster. He caught her halfway along the path to the fountain. Snatching a wrist, he wrenched her to a halt and dragged her into his arms. He leaned over her, letting her feel his hot breath in her face while she twisted in his hold and pounded at his chest.
“No!” she cried. “No, not like this!”
But he hardly heard for the boil of the blood in his veins and the sweet thunder in his heart and soul. He was as wild as the wind that swayed the creaking limbs of the oak above them, as fierce as the lightning that lit the sky. He wanted the woman he held and there was nothing to stop him from taking her. The principles and restraints that had once guided him had been abandoned as he divested himself of his normal body. Though they lingered, silently clamoring, in the depths of his mind, they had no power to deflect his half-crazed lust.
The colored stones of the courtyard floor were wet and matted with torn leaves and tree limbs and crushed flower petals. Still, he forced her downward with inexorable strength while tearing away, with fiendish joy, the last thin, wet layer of silk over her delectable body.
“No. Renfrey, please,” she said again, a whisper of unimagined grief. “I never meant to do this to you.”
He heard, oh, he heard, and something cried out in pain inside him. Still, it was not loud enough to compete with the bestial growling he made. Leaning over her, he reached for the cool, firm globe of her breast and closed his hand around it with mindless rapture.
And abruptly he felt a tearing agony in his nose. Wetness flowed, hot and brilliant vermilion in the lightning. He bellowed, roaring with the pain. Releasing her, he staggered back, off balance. As he lifted his hands to clutch at his face, they fastened on the huge brass ring that pierced his nostrils.
Carita struggled to her feet. In her hand was the nose ring's chain. She held him while the wind whipped her hair into glittering witch's locks and her eyes reflected the fire of the lightning. There was no victory in her gaze.
The punishing anguish cleared his head. He drew a deep breath, fought instinct and atavistic compulsion. Clamping down on his will with determination, he banished the Minotaur. But he could not rid himself of the hard core of his anger. As the head of the bull evolved once more into his own features, he took the brass ring and the chain and fashioned them into shackles of purest gold. Fastening them to her wrists, he bound her to him.
They stood for endless moments while the storm pummeled them with stinging debris and the rain sluiced down their bodies. Chest to breast, groin to pelvis, they absorbed each other. The gooseflesh of their chilled skin meshed while their blood poured in torrents through the creaking chambers of their hearts and their harsh breathing shuddered through them with the force of a gale.
Then Carita lifted her bound wrists that were caught between them. The shackles blurred, shrank, became bracelets of gold.
Shaking back her hair, she said in low and anguished tones, “All I ever wanted was to be loved for what I am, as I am.”
It was, he recognized, the voicing of his own tormented need. She was once more ensconced within his most sequestered self. From that source, she had mined and refined, with generosity and sure intuition, the single thing that united them, the shared longing that might make them whole.
It was also, of course, the one thing he could never give her.
“No,” he said. “If loving is death, then it's impossible.” His face set, his heart locked, he withdrew his spirit from hers with quiet finality.
It wasn't enough, of course. He had to remove temptation, wrench free of her and retreat step by step. She was left alone, her pale shape buffeted by wind and rain and his inexorable power of will. Alone in her defeat.
Except that, standing there in the wind-swept night, she lifted her arms, holding them out to him. And th
e wind whirled around her in a savage tornado.
It drew every leaf and petal in the courtyard into its vortex, sucking the draperies, flapping, through the open windows of the house, sending every free bit of paper and bric-a-brac whirling in her direction. It tore the vines from the walls, whipped the water from the fountain, made the great oak that shaded the open space thrash and groan as if in agony.
It was the expression of her need and a demonstration that she was more his equal than he had known. It was also an illustration of the clash inside him, his fervent desire, against all odds, to go to her and be the center of the tumult in her heart. More, to make her the warm, sweet core of his own.
He stood against it. Immobile.
It was not enough. He had to stop her before it was too late, before he succumbed to her anguished appeal. He raised his gaze to the tree above her. The huge oak uprooted with a rending explosion. The earth rumbled and the tree swayed. There was a splintering roar. Leaves showered down. The oak toppled, began to fall, gaining speed.
Carita squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, closed her eyes. The tree's shadow fell across her still face. Its darkness covered her, crashing down, down upon her.
She made no move to avoid it.
She did not attempt to resist.
~ CHAPTER 5 ~
Feathers, white, swirling like snow. The leaves, the branches, the bark and body of the oak tree were transformed so they drifted down, wind-blown, to cloak Carita in their softness.
Renfrey stood panting with the effort of that final, wrenching metamorphose. Then he clenched his fist and raised it high above his head.
The storm stopped.
Yet he stood there with sweat and acid grief burning his eyes. He dared not move. It was terror that held him—the terror of what else he might do if he released even a fraction of the lock he had clamped on his supernatural powers.
Carita, seeing his fear, felt the despairing madness leave her. Tears welled into her eyes.
The Warlock's Daughter Page 5
