by Debra Dunbar
And the memory of the way he’d kissed her.
But he was of the Draculia—dangerous, untenable sort of men, driven by power and pleasure. Their very (immortal) lives relied on taking the lifeblood from others. The only Dracule she knew of who was famously in control of his urges was Corvindale, who was a dark, brooding, angry man due to a century of self-deprivation.
“I have work to do,” she said instead. “If you want to find Devil’s Target.”
“That’s a pity,” St. Albans replied in that smooth, aristocratic voice with a primness that both annoyed and attracted her. Then his tone changed, and he appeared to straighten—as if prepared to change the topic to something more important. “You didn’t eat dinner tonight. All of your crew ate, but you didn’t take even a piece of bread.”
Arial’s heart skipped a beat. So he’d noticed that, had he? “Surely you don’t think I’ve lost my appetite due to your presence,” she replied—again without thinking. What the bloody hell was wrong with her? She had no reason to put ideas into his head.
“Ah,” he replied. His teeth—no fangs—flashed white in the lowering light in a bold smile. “So that explains it.”
Perhaps she’d wait until they reached Port-au-Prince, and she’d find a warm male body there to tickle her fancy. Federico was always a good option and she mostly trusted him.
But this one…he was too dangerous. Too dangerous because he matched her, word for word, thought for thought.
“I’ve work to do,” she told him again. “If you want me to find the ship.” She’d been just about to take off when he appeared, and now…well, she wasn’t prepared to let him in on that secret. “The longer we delay—”
“Yes, yes.” His expression turned curious, and though the last bit of light lingering from the setting sun cast long shadows, she could still make out all the details of his face—even to the thoughts in his eyes.
Night hawks could do that.
He continued, “Corvindale did mention that you have a particular affinity for navigation, as well as searching and finding other vessels. Which is why Captain Bonny is one of the most feared and most successful pirates of the Caribbean. She seems to be able to navigate her ship from out of nowhere.”
“Don’t leave out the Atlantic. And the Indian Ocean as well. I’ve done my share of pirating there too,” she said pertly.
“You are quite a treasure,” he said, and there it was—the faintest glow beginning in his gaze. “Are you certain you won’t join me for dinner?”
Arial almost laughed—for in truth, they could dine together quite compatibly. “I regret that my duty calls—to you and to your friend the Earl of Corvindale. Oh blast…I see I’ve forgotten my telescope. I’ve left it in the captain’s quarters…would you be so kind, St. Albans? I thought I saw a ship on the horizon, and I’d like to check before the sun is fully gone.”
He gave her an inscrutable look that bordered on insulted, but nevertheless his gentlemanly breeding won out. St. Albans gave a brief bow and turned away, striding off on his long legs and boots that thumped purposefully on the deck.
Arial acted quickly and moved into the shadows cast by the mains’l, ducking under lines and around a neat coil of rope until she was nearly at the stern.
Then she touched her tattoo, smoothing two fingers over it, feeling the pulse of her other self jumping beneath the image.
She closed her eyes and…became.
Chapter 3
Raine had a feeling she was sending him on a fool’s errand, but he went off into the shadows as directed. It was difficult to resist the warmth in her eyes as she made her request. He almost believed her.
But he hadn’t been born yesterday. In fact, he’d been born more than a hundred years ago—but his physical aging had ceased on the Christmas Eve he dreamt about Lucifer. When the Devil came to him in a dream and offered him immortality in exchange for his soul. When the fallen angel gave him an escape from the dark, empty life he’d been living.
Or, at least, that was what Lucifer had led him to believe. An escape.
How foolish he’d been.
Raine shook off the memory of that morning, when he awoke beneath a swath of festive evergreen boughs, head pounding, mouth dry, empty stomach heaving from drinking himself into a lonely stupor yet again.
But from then on, his life had been radically different.
And it had all led him to here, and now, and the fact that, although he went off as Arial Bonny had asked him to do, he didn’t quite go as far as she intended.
Raine had excellent instincts—except when it came to gambling, which was how he’d ended up at Luce’s mercy in the first place—and so he stopped once he was out of sight of the captain.
Then, when he heard her move—ever so lightly, nearly soundlessly—he emerged from the shadows to follow her.
The wind was steady and strong, but the weather was otherwise calm and comfortably warm, and there were only a handful of crew members up on the deck. No one to notice as Raine skirted the mains’l in the wake of the lovely, spicy woman who’d most definitely caught his fascination.
She was making her way to the rear of the ship, which was the most deserted area of the vessel. He was so intent on keeping her in his sight while not being seen that he tripped over a camouflaged coil of rope and nearly stumbled into a rack of water barrels. By the time he recovered and made certain no one had noticed the disturbance, Arial Bonny had disappeared.
He couldn’t see her, nor hear her any longer. The night was silent but for the soft flap of the sails above, and a distant metal clang from some metal hook hanging from a rope.
Damn and blast. Where could she have gone off to?
And then Raine heard a different sound. A sharp flap, then a change in the air followed by a soft, elegant whoosh.
He stumbled back on his heels as a massive bird of prey suddenly flew around from the stern and up, off into the night: graceful, smooth, and powerful.
He caught a glimpse of its coloring as the hawk passed through a moonbeam—a combination of black, brown, and gold. Its beak was elegant and sharp, frosted white in the starlight, and its talons were the same. She…somehow he knew it was a she…had a wingspan wider than his arms would go.
Raine stared after the hawk, his skin prickling.
Surely that wasn’t…no. Ludicrous.
Then he began to chuckle.
Well, why the bloody hell not?
While Arial was gone on what Raine surmised was her reconnaissance mission to find out where the Devil’s Target was—and now her skill at easily finding and following other ships was explained—he went in search of someone on which to feed.
It had been more than a day since he’d fed, and although he wasn’t feeling strong hunger—except for the lovely Captain Bonny, and that hunger was an entirely different matter than mere sustenance—he thought it would be prudent to have a snack in case they met up with the Devil’s Target any time soon.
But as he wandered around the deck, Raine found himself less than enticed by any of the crew members he encountered. The same could not be said for the reverse, for he seemed to attract salacious looks from more than one of them.
Including Bladsoe, the very tall and broad mate Raine had enthralled as he boarded the ship—only to be interrupted by Captain Bonny herself. He smiled privately, remembering her admonition that Raine was more the type her crew preferred than she was.
Raine had no preference himself when it came to feeding. A man’s blood was just as acceptable as that of a woman; and if the act of feeding—of penetration and laving and drinking blood was inherently sensual and erotic—that was just part of the experience. While Raine might feed on either gender in a pinch, he took only women to his bed—though he knew Dracule who weren’t as particular. He shrugged. He’d lived long enough and experienced enough dark, sensual hedonism that little bothered him in the way of sexual encounters…except the practice perpetrated by Cezar Moldavi. That evil bastard preferred young
girls and boys, and made a practice of leaving them to die after taking what he wanted from their delicate bodies.
That was why Raine was here in these hellish tropics, with days that were far too long and sunny for one of his kind. Because Moldavi must be destroyed, and if obtaining the powerful Svari medallion from the Devil’s Target brought Raine, Corvindale, and Chas Woodmore closer to doing so, then he would risk it all.
Even frying in the blazing sun.
And if he got Arial Bonny into bed and beneath him and his fangs during the process, he’d consider the mission as getting as close to Heaven as he was ever going to get.
Even the passing thought of Heaven caused Lucifer’s Mark, located on the back of his shoulder, to twinge and throb painfully. It was a constant reminder of Raine’s damaged soul and its immortal connection to Lucifer.
But at that moment, something else, and new—and unpleasant—prickled over the back of his neck. Raine stiffened. This was not the first time he’d felt a warning shift of energy since coming onto this ship. There was something evil in the air, and he felt it boring into him as if some entity stared from the darkness, waiting for the opportunity to spring.
He didn’t turn. Instead, he became very still and homed all of his attention on the space behind him as he stood at the edge of the ship’s rail. All but the last bit of sliver of the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the line where sky and sea met was slowly becoming less definite.
He closed his eyes, focusing every other sense on the danger he’d felt, the wave of malignancy that had been released toward him.
Someone was watching. The weight of a malicious stare caused his muscles to tense and his body to ready.
Raine spun suddenly, prepared to ward off an attack.
But no one was there.
And the sensation was gone.
Chapter 4
Arial landed in the shadows on top of the quarterdeck at the stern of Black Lass. The large flounder she’d dived for, then scooped from the sea on her way back from her aerial scouting mission, had ceased to struggle in her talons.
St. Albans noticed that she hadn’t eaten with her crew. No, she normally preferred to dine in her own way. She felt more energized and alive when she did so, in her more “wild” state—as she liked to think of it. The hunt and the satisfaction of dining on the spoils of her skill kept her natural instincts sharp. Something of paramount importance for a feared pirate of the seas.
But Arial had hardly eaten half of the fish when she sensed his presence. He stood on the lower deck, and though he surely couldn’t see her from her perch—ah. The blood. The scent had attracted him.
Blast it. She hadn’t thought of that.
He didn’t speak, but she felt him nearby. She swore she heard him draw in a breath, though the sound should have been swallowed by the noise of waves sloshing against the sides of the ship, and the various clanging and whipping sounds of metal hooks and sails caught in the wind.
She finished quickly, using her talons to tear into the last bit of flesh and her lethal beak to pick through a few more morsels. Then she snatched up the fish carcass and launched herself into the air toward the prow of the ship, away from St. Albans and his all-seeing night eyes.
After disposing of the fish, dropping it into the churning sea, Arial swung back around and landed lightly on the deck in the shadows so she could transform back into human form.
No sooner had she shuffled her wings and lowered them to her sides as arms than she heard a soft, amused voice. “I wondered whether you’d return clothed…or not.”
Startled not only by his proximity, but by the comment itself, Arial barely held back a squeak that was nearly a laugh.
“I see that I must be disappointed,” he continued, moving from the shadows to where she could see him. “That somehow when you transform—is that the term you use?—your clothing reappears as if nothing had happened.”
“If that weren’t the case,” Arial said, smoothing her hair in its braid, “it would be highly inconvenient to make the change.”
“I suppose that depends upon one’s perspective.” He reached toward her, and she just managed to keep from flinching when he touched her head, then pulled away. He was holding a feather—a brown and black flecked one about the size of his finger. “I cannot tell you how grateful I am that I don’t share the strong aversion to feathers as several of my peers do,” he said as he ran his fingers contemplatively over her feather, and she felt her skin prickle as if he were actually touching her.
“Aversion?” She was shaken and unsettled. Was it simply because he was near? Was it the dark, hungry glint in his eyes? Or was it the smooth, mellow, caressing tone of his voice?
“So you know all about how to block the thrall of a Dracule, but not of our Asthenia?” He seemed genuinely surprised.
“I don’t know how to block your thrall, St. Albans. I simply do it.”
This appeared to give him even more of a start. “Indeed. Apparently, then, I am the first Dracule you’ve encountered.”
“I didn’t say that. I’ve actually met Corvindale several times. His ability to enthrall me was not in question, unfortunately,” she said ruefully. “However, he was a gentleman. I came away unscathed. Unlike when I encountered Lord Dewhurst.”
“Corvindale, a gentleman?” St. Albans laughed, but there was an edge to the sound. He wasn’t enjoying himself; he seemed unsettled. “So you are saying I cannot enthrall you.”
“Apparently that’s the case. Now, what is this fascinating thing called an…Asthenia? An aversion, you say?”
But St. Albans merely stared at her as if attempting to translate a strange language. “I thought it might be because…because of who you are.”
Arial bit back a smile. He was flummoxed and offended, and she was again reminded of a young boy who’d been denied something he expected. “Perhaps you’re losing your touch, Lord Norringford.”
Irritation flashed in his eyes and he moved closer. He fixed his attention on her, and she felt that soft, warm tug that made her feel as if she were swimming in a deep, tropical pool. He reached up and brushed the back of his hand along the edge of her chin, caressing her as he held her with his gaze.
His aristocratic nostrils flared as he drew in a scent, and she saw the glow in his eyes brighten, becoming orange-red and hot.
“I can smell it on you,” he murmured. “The blood from your meal. It makes you all the more alluring to me, Arial Bonny.”
“That’s Captain Bonny,” she managed to say, though her tongue felt thick and her insides were a hot mix of liquid and fluttering sensations. He was close, and the combination of his scent and figure and the warmth of his proximity made her heart thud harder.
She wished she could blame it on his thrall, but she couldn’t. It was all her.
When he bent his head to cover her lips, she met him halfway. He groaned when he tasted her—a deep, feral sigh from the back of his throat.
And, Lord, he was delicious: warm and slick and sensual. She felt him shiver beneath the hand that had somehow become pressed against his chest, felt the deep, base tremor in her own body as she took his tongue inside in a sweeping, tangling dance with hers. She was lightheaded as their breaths mingled, as his arms tightened around her. She felt the length of his fangs, harmless for now, but a warning of who he was and what he could take from her.
But it was even more than that. She knew he could take much more than merely her blood, or even her life.
He could take her heart.
Arial pulled her lips away, and he followed, kissing the side of her mouth, then along her chin and down onto her throat with those sensual lips, and the smooth, hard reminder of his fangs.
“St. Albans,” she sighed, arching into him a little even as she fought to regain her footing—for she had somehow climbed up onto his boots again.
“Arial,” he murmured. “Let me taste you. Please…I need to taste you.” He was nibbling, sucking at the pulsing tendon of her th
roat, and his breath was rasping against her skin, his fingers curling into her spine and the back of her head.
A shaft of fear darted through her: he was strong, so strong, and in her human form, she was weak by comparison. The pressure from the outside of his fangs sliding against her skin made her eyes bolt wide.
“No,” she said, putting her hands on his chest and pushing him back. “No.”
To her relief, he moved, released her, stepped away. He was breathing hard and his eyes were bright, fiery red. His upper fangs were long and sharp, filling his mouth and causing his full lips to appear distorted.
They stared at each other for a moment, chests heaving a little, pulses pounding in their respective throats. She could feel his, even though she couldn’t see it. A remnant from her night hawk form.
“Are you…do you…” Her mouth was surprisingly dry after such a sleek, glorious kiss. “Do you need to…uh…”
He cracked a sudden smile, and she saw his fangs ease. The glow evaporated from his eyes. “Do I need to feed? Is that what you wanted to know? No, my lovely captain. I’ve no real urge or need to feed. It was all you, Arial. I want you.”
She swallowed, suddenly lightheaded again. She needed to fly, to get away from this, to clear her head and go high and broad above the sea. And suddenly, with a start, she remembered.
“I found the Devil’s Target,” she said, taking care to keep distance between them. Not because she didn’t trust him, but because it was herself she didn’t trust. After all, she’d climbed onto his boots to get closer.
Though a soft, lustful light remained in the depths of his eyes, the expression in them sharpened. “How far away?”
“At least a day.” When he frowned, she continued firmly, “She’s a fast ship, and Captain Ajam knows the sea as well as I do. And there’s a storm brewing. Do you smell it?”
He sniffed, then shook his head and fixed his eyes on her once more. “All I can smell at the moment is you.” He held her with that look, but when she broke away he merely shook his head and sighed. “Somehow you’re immune to my charms.”
