Yet Scarlet couldn’t remember any kiss being so…gentle. Not the bruising ordeal she was used to. Gentle as silk, his lips barely touched hers, only grazed from one corner of her mouth to the other. His breath stopped for a while then resumed. An ache the likes of which she’d never experienced before clutched at her belly, reduced her nipples to tiny throbbing hearts. How could a man she’d only just met produce such a reaction in her?
Heat like a fever flushed her cheeks. Raising her face to his, she let him kiss her more deeply, until his tongue tentatively brushed against the seal of her lips. A moan struggled up her throat, but she pushed it back down, refusing to yield to the mounting desire clawing at her, refusing to succumb to her flesh. Her instincts had kept her alive. She should listen to them now and flee while she still could. Scarlet, instead, raised her head higher. She could perhaps just let him kiss her, take her pleasure while she could, but not surrender the rest.
Within a matter of moments, Scarlet’s flesh felt on fire. She was slipping fast.
Knowing it may open something she couldn’t close back again, Scarlet yielded to the yearning, to the call of the flesh this man so easily raised. When he put a hand to her cheek, she let it rest against it, enjoying the way his palm provided warmth and soft support to her head. Hesitantly, she touched his white hair, marveling at the silky quality of it, then snaked a hand up his arm, around his neck. Scarlet pressed his head down against hers.
The man pressed his other hand against her chest, seemingly feeling for her heart, which thudded against her ribs with the rhythm of a mad drum. Long fingers traced the contour of her collar, parted the fabric in the middle, even managed to undo the first tiny button.
Her body reacted almost violently to his touch. Spasms tightened her sex, which was growing slicker by the second. Arching back into him, she allowed his gentle mouth access to her throat while his hand pulled the fabric of her bodice under a breast, exposing the aching nipple to air. And to his mouth.
Scarlet hissed a breath when he wrapped his lips around then suckled the nipple he’d just freed from its constraint. No man had ever bothered to pleasure her this way before. They usually just went ahead with their own pursuit.
He said something in German she couldn’t understand. The sound of his velvet voice, deep yet soft, raised the fine hair on her arms. If he went further than kissing, she wasn’t sure she’d object. May even help.
A metallic clink triggered an immediate reaction in her sharp-edged instincts. Scarlet pulled away several paces, hurriedly rearranging her dress before bumping against the copper bathtub occupying the wall near the door. The man just stood there, panting, then leaned against his end of the table for support. He stepped back from the sliver of dawn light, back into the shadows.
The door to the room opened wider. “Good morning, dear cousin Fredrick. I trust you are in capable hands.”
Shame flushed Scarlet’s cheeks. Refusing to give in to it, she stared stubbornly at the lady when she glided in the room, silver cane jauntily resting over a shoulder.
“Very capable hands, but that’s why you hired her, wasn’t it?” the man—Fredrick—sneered, coming back into the pale light and sitting at the table. He poured himself a cup of tea.
Stung more acutely than she should have, Scarlet noticed his hands shook. So did hers, for that matter. He threw a quick glance at her through his bangs and sat straighter. A collection of dull clinks accompanied his movements. With her gaze, she searched for its source.
Then the realization hit her. Everything about the room, the peculiar worn path on the rug, the table so distant from the rest of the furniture…it all hit her squarely in the chest.
He was in chains.
This was no sick man’s room, but a cell.
A silver-colored manacle and lock bound the man’s naked ankle, crusted with blood, with the other end of the long chain cemented directly into the wall behind the bed. She hadn’t seen it when he’d been lying there, and hadn’t heard it when he walked to the table. If she hadn’t been so engrossed by his eerie beauty, his tender mouth…
Her instincts had failed her.
“Do not look so scared, Scarlet, my cousin may look…menacing, but he is properly restrained.”
“I’m not scared, Lady Katrina. It’s just…the chains…”
The lady looked annoyed for a split second before smiling sadly. “For his own safety, of course. Such is his illness.”
Perhaps he suffered from an illness of the mind? Was prone to hurting himself or others? Something was obviously abnormal about his feverish, haunted gaze. Would he be dangerous to work around? She never made a habit of turning her back on anyone, but perhaps this man would require even more awareness. Still, to chain him?
Scarlet clenched her jaws harder. Hers wasn’t the place to ask questions. If there was a chain around the man’s ankle, it was because it needed to be there. All she wanted, all she cared for, was making enough coins to get out of there and start a new life far from Werner and his greedy clutches. Far from Lady Katrina and whatever dark secret she fostered. And—most importantly—far from this dangerously beautiful man with the feverish eyes and tender mouth.
* * * * *
Fredrick had been alive a long time. God knew he had. Too long, he thought sometimes. Yet he’d never met a woman like her. Scarlet. He remembered her name right away, unlike the others before. Not the usual sort his cousin brought back from the city to take care of him. His thoughts turned right back to Scarlet and his spirits were considerably lifted.
To say the woman had walked right into the room, so close he’d been able to touch her. It’d been such a long time since he’d tasted a real woman, and not his sadistic cousin. He hadn’t been able to stop himself in time.
She hadn’t recoiled despite his appearance, which unfailingly made people who weren’t used to it uneasy. This required pluck. Instead, she’d welcomed his attentions, even manifested her own. Strange, spirited woman. If only she weren’t in his cousin’s employ, an ally to his own personal devil.
Fredrick watched the servant leave, pretending to be too engrossed with his breakfast—which was excellent and devoid of any suspect matter or smell—to notice. But he did notice. As did his cousin.
“What a succulent kleiner Apfel she is, do you not think?” Cousin said, leaning against the cane. “One just wants to take a bite, nein?”
Fredrick’s first reaction was anger, which surprised him. Why did he care if his cousin was attracted to the young woman? She could have the servant. It’s not as though she were relevant. Not as though she’d ever be his. Melancholy filled his heart. He pushed the emotion down, kept it from Cousin’s cunning eyes.
“Why deny it? I would have enjoyed her as well,” she replied, smiling widely. “Then again, maybe I will. Lothar is already enamored with her, may even invite her into our chambers.”
At the mention of the vile man, Fredrick nearly lost his crackling composure, one he’d fought the last two years to attain. He fought the rage welling up inside him, fought the darker side of his soul as it struggled for control. It was his cousin’s dearest wish to break him, make him lose control, let the beast within rip out of his soul.
“What do you want, Cousin? I’m eating.”
The grin slid off her angular face. “Then you better enjoy it while you can, because it is that time of the month again. I shall be back tonight.”
After she left, Fredrick finished his breakfast. He’d need his strength.
* * * * *
Fredrick had felt it for days. The moon was rising high in the sky, its face a perfect disk. A full moon.
And as with every full moon, his cousin’s malicious game would begin. It usually went thus— His cousin would ask for his signature of the marriage and transfer deed. He’d say no, send her to Hell. Her thugs would show up. Then his world would become one of pain. Again. It’d been this way for the past two years, ever since he’d invited her for a short visit. She’d seduced him, drugge
d him with the help of her odious physician. Fredrick had awakened here, in the tower, and hadn’t seen the sky since.
Scheming witch.
It wasn’t the thought of her and that man-whore sleeping in his room, or her running his castle that disgusted him the most. For all her faults, his cousin was a clever businesswoman, albeit a ruthless one. It was what she intended to do with his people that sent his blood boiling. Because she was indeed such an astute trade-minded person, she wanted to split up his lands and sell them off, one bit at a time. Where would his people find work, which was so rare in these parts? Though the same von Innsbruck blood flowed in her veins, she felt no sense of allegiance whatsoever toward their land, the people depending on them.
He did feel an allegiance to his people and prided himself on knowing each one by first name and family history. No wonder, since he was both the ancestor who’d gathered the wealth in the first place, and the descendant who now owned it. Fredrick von Innsbruck the First. Only he knew his exact age—one hundred and twenty-two years—the last eighty-six or so in his present “form”. Ever since that long ago night, in the forest, when he’d been attacked…left different.
As if the word alone had summoned the demon, she entered the room, looking more ravishing than ever. If demons were the image of the Devil himself, then Hell was peopled with beautiful creatures indeed. Beautiful and deadly.
“I am glad to have found a new plaything for you, Fredrick,” she said, intruding upon his thoughts. “The next few months will be particularly enjoyable. For both of us, I think.”
Three months. That was usually how long she kept her servants around. By that time, either they would develop pity for him and try to help, or they would turn into nasty little swines like the last one. Either way, they invariably ended up a nuisance to his cousin. And being a nuisance to that woman meant only one thing.
Scarlet would be no different. The thought that someone else was going to suffer and die because of him weighed on his soul. Yet giving in to Cousin would mean much worse—poverty and misery for the hundreds who depended on the von Innsbrucks. And so Fredrick had to live with the fact he had, and would again, sacrifice a few to save many.
Feigning indifference, Fredrick shrugged as he emptied his cup of cold tea. Then, rising, he stood in the center of the room, waiting for the inevitable, like a beach for the tide.
She carried the cane in one hand and a five-arm candelabrum in the other. For her benefit, and that of her thugs, since Fredrick had no need for light.
“Why can you not admit what you cannot change?” she asked, coming so very close he could smell her. “Marry me, give me an heir. I would even let you live a while to see him or her prosper under my tutelage.”
“Tutelage? You mean something like this?” Fredrick said, tapping his foot once so the chain would clink.
Cousin tut-tutted. “Of course not. Never my own flesh and blood. I would not do it to my future husband, either. Were it not for your special…abilities, I never would have chained you in my tower. I would have tied you to my bed.”
Fredrick didn’t join in her laughter. “It’s my tower and my bed, in case you’re forgetting your place.”
The grin turned into an ugly scowl. “I know what you are,” she snapped as she angrily struck the floor with the butt of the cane. “Do not try to hide it from me. I have known for years, Fredrick. Years. And I have watched you, studied you, until I could find a flaw in your armor—oh, it is hard to find—but there is one. Some day, Fredrick, I will find it, and when I do, I will slide a blade right into it.”
Fredrick snorted in derision. “There is no flaw in my armor.”
A sudden cramp made his lip twitch. Was it time already?
Cousin’s eyes narrowed. She licked her lips. “Why do you fight it? I would not.”
Fight it? As though he could.
Already, he could feel the first subtle changes in his body. Smells became sharper, so did sounds. His vision, already better than most, heightened. Then he heard them. Four pairs of feet climbing up the steps.
“You can feel them coming, can you not?” she asked, her nostrils flared with excitement. “What I would not do to taste you like this, right at this moment, to take you all in.” Lust blazed behind her eyes. She let the silver butt of the cane rest against her thigh, slowly rubbing up and down.
The quick knock on the door sounded like thunderclap to Fredrick’s acute senses. Four men spilled into the room in perfect silence, each with a hatchet handle in his hand. A revolting mixture of smells accompanied them. Onions, ale and mutton. Oil from one of the men’s boots and tobacco from another’s mouth. One of them had recently bled for Fredrick could smell the coppery tang he knew too well.
His cousin licked her ruby lips, teasing him with the sight of her tongue. “It is time to change your mind, dear cousin. Sign the deed and all of this will go away.”
“Go to Hell.”
She laughed. “You will not mind if I let you get there first?”
With a quick nod of her chin, she indicated the men could begin. After taking a few steps back, she set the candelabrum on her side of the table, sat on the chair and proceeded to pleasure herself with his cane.
Without emotions, the men fanned out on either side. He never had to wait long.
Fredrick undid the first few buttons on his tunic. The usual signal. Such a perverted dance this had become.
Fredrick sidestepped the first attack, snarling in triumph when his fist collided against one’s face. Bones crunched satisfyingly under his knuckles. But the transformation was making it hard to control his limbs. He stumbled back, exploding suns of pain behind his eyelids, searing, blinding him. His expanding jaw cracked audibly, made him groan.
He swung with a throbbing fist, caught something. Then something swung at him, caught him. Fredrick tasted blood on his tongue. Bastards. His neck stretched impossibly wide as his shoulders popped out of their sockets. White-hot pokers singed him as his skin split over his elbows, his hands.
Images, horrible with clarity, flashed in front of him, like a mad monochromatic puppet show. People fleeing in terror at the sight of him. Others brandishing crude weapons, spitting insults, setting fire to his refuge. So long ago, too many memories.
He tried to shut them out, reel back from the visions of Hell and damnation. For this is how he felt, damned. In every way. Damned to Hell, damned to life. Damned to solitude and ostracism.
His whole body rang with grief. Fredrick took blind swipes of his rapidly changing hands but met only air. A cry of impotence and frustration ripped up his throat. Blood was blinding him. His blood, damn it!
After what felt an eternity, he collapsed onto one knee, panting, wheezing. Still, the men pounded on him. He was struck on a kneecap and felt it split, howled at the liquid fire spreading up his thigh. Another blow, and this one ruined his left hand, which he was using to cover his head.
The sound accompanying each blow sounded dull as a felt drum. In one last desperate charge, he managed to grab one by the throat, squeezed through the hail of blows falling on him. The man yelled in pain. The sound of gurgles forced Fredrick’s eyes open. Through the blood trickling down into his eyes, he saw his victim hanging limply by the throat. Fredrick’s hand, the one holding the lifeless form, had sprouted glistening dark claws, which dug into the man’s flesh. A thin but powerful jet of blood squirted out rhythmically. Someone yelled. Man, woman, he could no longer tell.
Fredrick only had time to wince when one of the men hit him squarely on the mouth. He dropped the lifeless body, threw himself at this new tormentor. The chain shredded his flesh. Something popped in his ankle.
Now forced on all fours by the agony of the transformation and the men’s relentless assault, Fredrick could do nothing but yelp with each strike. His vocal cords and most of the sinews holding his head tore apart, he heard every single one pop in his skull. Yet Fredrick knew the worst was still to come.
When his face began to change, hi
s nose and mouth to elongate, his growing teeth to pierce and shred his gums, his eye sockets to separate, the blinding pain reduced him to a quivering heap on the floor. The men had stopped beating him. That or he could no longer feel the blows. Then complete silence.
Before the change completely took him and his human mind, he felt rather than sensed a presence by his side. Through a ruined mouth, which no longer functioned as a man’s, Fredrick struggled to force words out, to show he was still in control.
“…kill you…”
Hellish pain made him roar. The howl escaping his mouth a sound no man could make.
Chapter Four
There was a beast after her. She heard it panting, growling. Strangely, a sweet smell accompanied it, tickled Scarlet’s memory. She knew that smell. Out of breath, she ran down the tower staircase. Stones abraded her palms, which she kept against the walls to keep from falling. She’d always been a good runner. It’d kept her alive all these years. But the beast was gaining. It’d catch her soon. A clawed hand fell on Scarlet’s shoulder. She screamed.
Scarlet snapped up in her bunk with the force of a breaking bowstring. Sweat clammed her hands. The smell of her nightmare, sweet, flowery scent, drifted away. Snarling a curse, she flopped back down and rolled over. A soft knock came to her door.
“Scarlet,” Ute said before opening the door. “Are you all right, girl? Heard you scream all the way to the kitchen.”
Scarlet slid out of bed and hurriedly donned her clothes. “I’m fine.”
Keeping her gaze averted as she slid by Ute and through the doorway, Scarlet climbed up the steps to the kitchen. She’d never had many dreams, never seemed to have slept long enough to dream.
She knew the beast. Of that, she was sure.
“’Tis the master’s bath today,” Ute said before putting the cover back on the plate. “While you help him with breakfast, I’ll have the lads bring the hot water to the tower. They’ll leave it by the door downstairs because none of them’s blood was good.”
Wolfsbane Page 4
