by Колин Глисон
“I was afraid of that, Giordan—ah, forgive my informality. I’ve long thought of you that way. These last few weeks have been rather difficult for me, not knowing for certain. Particularly the time we spent in here after you fought with my sister that night.” His dark gaze settled meaningfully on him.
Giordan realized with a start that that night, he’d been sitting in this very chamber dressed only in breeches, and likely smelling of arousal and maleness after the session with Narcise. His mouth dried and he realized now what he’d scented beneath Moldavi’s cologne of cedar and patchouli. It was the essence of desperate desire that he’d found unpleasant.
Moldavi continued. “I had held out hope that you might be of the same mind as Eddersley—albeit much more subtle and reserved about it. After all, no man could resist Narcise and you appeared to do so.”
“A man who doesn’t force himself onto a woman isn’t necessarily a molly,” Giordan said with disdain. “He’s a gentleman.”
“Despite your protestations to the contrary,” Moldavi said as he moved away from the sideboard and closer to Giordan, “I happen to know you’re no stranger to buggery, particularly from your teen years.” His eyes burned red and hot.
Giordan went cold, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. “The correct term would be rape,” he said from between numb lips. He tried to summon the dark rage that he knew simmered deep inside, but somehow Moldavi’s words and knowledge had catapulted him back to those dark days and evil memories. They’d grabbed hold of him and smothered his instinctive response, setting him off balance and out of sorts. He felt as if he were swimming deep in a very murky pond: half-blind, sluggish, breathless.
Moldavi seemed to realize this, and he was now standing very close to him. His scent rolled off in heavy waves, thick with lust. “Why are you here, Giordan?” he asked, the sibilant hiss very pronounced in his voice. A fang flashed, the gold chip in it winking coyly as he looked up at him.
“You know why I’m here. I want Narcise.”
“Hmm. Yes. I wonder what you’re willing to do to have her.” Moldavi reached up as if to touch him, and Giordan knocked the man’s hand away with a sharp, controlled movement.
“You overstep,” he said with a calm he didn’t realize he currently possessed. The anger simmered faster and harder now, nearer to the boiling point. He stepped back and took a large sip of his drink. When he raised his arm, the weight of the stake shifted in his sleeve, reminding him that he did have a chance to end this now.
“You want Narcise, but so do so many other men, Giordan. It’s really quite a quandary for me. She’s very valuable in a variety of ways—you understand why I cannot give her up. Because, of course, if you fancy yourself in love with her, you’ll want her with you—at least for a time. Decades perhaps. And then what would I do?”
“You can have the ship,” Giordan said. “All of it. Two ships if you want.”
“Shall we make it three?” Moldavi asked with an intimate chuckle. “No, no, I don’t want that. Although from what I understand, you can afford it.” He clicked his tongue, his eyes dancing with pleasure. “Forget about the stake you have hidden on you, Giordan. You can’t murder me. Do you think I’m that much of a fool? What do you think will happen to Narcise the minute you attempt it?”
“Why should I believe you?”
Moldavi sighed. “For an intelligent man, you’re being tiresome. Have you not learned that I don’t make mistakes, nor do I make empty threats?”
Giordan could hardly disagree. All along, he thought he’d been clever, but it appeared that Moldavi was a step ahead of him. “What do you want? My house in Paris? Four ships? Access to my bank accounts? You can have it all.”
The other man continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “She’s perfectly content here, Giordan, truly. We’ve come to an arrangement after so many years and I rarely have to discipline her anymore. She’s kept in comfort, like a princess, dressed in the most fashionable of clothing. She has everything she could want. And she hasn’t lost a fencing match for years—except to you.” His voice dropped and his eyes heated again. “I did particularly enjoy watching that.”
“She’s a prisoner.”
“I prefer to think of it as house arrest,” he replied with a smile that showed a tip of fang. “I have something else I’d like to show you. Something special I’ve had made for Narcise.”
He walked over to a table. On top of it was a box, and Moldavi turned to lift the lid.
With a sharp jerk of his arm, Giordan had the stake through the loose cuff and into his hand. He launched himself across the room, and in a half breath he had Moldavi against the wall, slamming the slighter man there with his hand, the stake poised.
“By the Devil, you are magnificent,” said Moldavi in a rough, breathless voice. His eyes burned with an orange glow.
“I want Narcise,” Giordan said from between tight jaws.
“She isn’t here,” replied Moldavi, his gaze growing hotter. “I took the precaution of removing her from the premises.” He looked up into Giordan’s eyes, his lips parted slightly in a provocative show of fangs. “There’s only one way for you to have her.”
Revulsion and fury took hold, and Giordan slammed the stake down into Moldavi’s chest, propelling himself closer with the effort. The man jolted, grunted against him but something stopped the pike from penetrating fully. Armor.
His adversary looked up at him, his pale, beringed hand suddenly fisted in Giordan’s shirt, holding him still, leaning into him with his own vampiric strength. His fangs were fully visible, his breathing rough.
Luce’s black soul.
Giordan pulled free and spun away. His heart was pounding, his stomach roiling, the stake useless in his hand. “What do you want?”
“Don’t be a fool. You know what I want.” Moldavi’s voice was hard, and yet sensual at the same time. The words hung there for a moment.
He stepped away from the wall where he’d remained after the attack, and adjusted his waistcoat. “Perhaps you’d like a bit of incentive, Giordan? I wanted to show you what I’ve had made for Narcise. What she’ll wear when I give her to Belial if you and I don’t come to an agreement.”
He turned back to the table and finished removing the top to the box. As Giordan watched, his host removed a lacy, filigree object that looked like the same black lace of Narcise’s gown. It was a cloak or cape, and it shivered and flowed as Moldavi shook it out, holding it by the collars.
Then he turned it around so that Giordan could see the other side.
It was lined with brown feathers. Rows and rows of them.
“No,” he whispered, turning to Moldavi in shock. “No, by hell.”
“Now, then,” he said. “Are you ready to negotiate?”
“Negotiate?” Giordan said. The numbness had eased away to cold fear and impotent anger. “You seem to hold all the cards.”
Moldavi liked that, and he laughed with delight. “I do hold most of them, that’s true. I spend much of my time arranging things.”
“I want Narcise,” Giordan said, his lungs aching, his knees watery. “Name your price. Whatever it takes to get her out of here.”
Moldavi showed his fangs, a light dancing in his malevolent eyes. “I want you.”
Even though he’d expected it, Giordan couldn’t control the sharp, dark twist in his middle. “Be more specific,” he managed to say.
“Three days and three nights. Naked. Willing.” Moldavi’s smile couldn’t even be described as maniacal; it was too calm and controlled. Satisfied. “Is that specific enough?”
~ II ~
Liberty
10
March 1804
Every so often, the memory came hurtling back into Narcise’s mind.
Although it was more than ten years since Giordan Cale had destroyed her, every nuance of the moment, every sight, sound, color, scent…even the remembrance of the way her being simply stopped and then imploded…it all came back.
As if it were happening again.
Anything could trigger it: the sight of a piece of charcoal on her drawing table. The sound when her maid dropped a handful of hairpins that scattered on the floor. The glimpse of a head of brown curls. The scent of a peach.
Whatever it was would send her mind shooting back to that moment when she walked into Cezar’s private chambers.
Even now, her belly shuddered, threatening to send her last meal spewing forth, but try as she might, Narcise couldn’t keep herself from going back there, reliving the very minutiae of a time she’d kill to forget.
She’d been looking for her brother—something she generally avoided doing, but there was no help for it, for she hadn’t had a fencing lesson or a painting session for three weeks, including a false one with Giordan Cale—and she wanted to find out if and why he’d canceled the meetings with her tutors.
Cezar had been unusually absent since the night he’d brought her back after she seduced Cale, and Narcise had welcomed the reprieve, knowing how difficult it would be to hide her feelings about Cale in front of her brother. Fortunately Cezar had been in a relatively fine humor and had actually released most of the children he’d had captive. Perhaps that should have been a warning sign to Narcise, but at the time, she was merely grateful those lives had been spared.
She’d also expected to hear from or to see Giordan himself…but three weeks had passed since she seduced him, and she’d seen and heard from no one. Including Monsieur David and her fencing instructor. But it was Giordan’s absence, of course, that tortured her the most.
And that had her active mind making up scenarios and explanations—none of which were pleasant in the least. The worst of them all was the image of him with another woman, or women, perhaps…being the jovial, sensual host she knew him to be…and providing all form of hospitality.
Or perhaps now that she’d actually seduced him, that they’d actually been together, he’d moved on to another conquest. That was the Dracule way. Her heart grew cold at the thought.
Had she trusted him only to be betrayed and set aside?
At last, after neither David nor Cale appeared for her lesson for the third week, she went in search of Cezar, noting vaguely that all of the servants seemed to be otherwise occupied. His private parlor, where he kept the dish of sparrow feathers, was empty, but…
She stepped just inside the door, despite the deterrent of the feathers. She smelled him. Giordan. Giordan had been here recently.
The flush of a thrill warmed her and her heart began to pound with hope. She had no doubt, no doubt at all that Giordan would find a way to free her from Cezar. He’d been here, recently, very recently. Earlier today.
It was at that moment that two things happened: the first—and now, much later, she understood the significance—was that the ever-present tray with feathers was not in the chamber. The second was that she noticed that, across the parlor, the door to Cezar’s private bedchamber was slightly open. And there were sounds and scents coming from inside…heavy, erotic, strong scents.
Even now, in her mind, her memory of it, Narcise screamed at herself don’t go over there…
But she did. Whether she realized what it was, whether it was the scent on the air, permeating the chamber, or whether there was some other reason she was compelled to walk on silent feet over to the chamber door…
To peer around the crack and to look in…no, no, noooooo, don’t…but she does it again…she looks in…
At first, she doesn’t realize what she sees. It’s the scent of arousal…heavy and thick…of lifeblood and eroticism and man…. It catches her, giving that little tug in the center of her belly that spears down low and causes desire….
The chamber is lit well enough by the blazing fire that Cezar always keeps, and several lamps, turned up to a golden glow. There is a massive bed, its curtains pulled wide, to one side. A large divan and two chairs are arranged in front of the fire. A table covered with glasses and bottles sits next to it, and even from here, she can see that three of the four bottles are empty. The scent of whiskey and blood mingle strongly with musk and virility.
There are two people, not on the bed, but on the divan, directly in front of the raging fire, opposite the door around which she peers. Since her brother’s varied proclivities aren’t unknown to her, she’s not surprised to see that he’s with a man.
She can’t see well, she’s not even certain why she’s compelled to watch—perhaps the scent hooked into her mind and dragged her there—but the first glimpse of a pale, slender hand curling over a strong, sleek shoulder makes her breath seize.
There is a cast of amber light over his skin, over the familiar golden curve of arms and shoulders now marred with bitemarks, shadowed by the flickering fire…the golden brush of lamplight over the strong profile with the patrician nose, so handsome, so perfect…the glow creating a nimbus from behind thick, dark curls, and an unholy halo around an even darker head adjacent to his.
She can’t breathe. The floor is falling away from her feet as if she is standing on a house of cards, and her body ceases. Everything halts: breath, heart, sensation, emotion.
His rich, tawny skin is slick with perspiration, shadowed from the hands on him…his face half turned from the door, etched tight with pleasure and pain. His lips, drawn back from his mouth in some sort of groan or grimace as fangs drive into his shoulder…
For all of the details of that moment, Narcise remembered hardly anything of what happened afterward. She must have made her way from the chamber, she must not have screamed despite the shrieking and wailing inside her, stumbling from the private parlor, somehow back to her own room before her body began to feel again.
Shattered.
And then, after that, it was dull and empty.
Sometime later—days, she thought, based on the number of times a servant came for her to feed…but she had no true concept of time for a while—Cezar sent for her.
She had no choice but to answer his summons, hardly aware of what she was doing. When she walked into Cezar’s private parlor, the conduit that had led to her destruction, Giordan was there.
Cezar was sitting in one of the chairs, looking complacent and relaxed. “You have a visitor, Narcise,” he said with great congeniality.
“He’s not my visitor,” she managed to say. Despite her best efforts, her voice shook. Rage and pain threatened to erupt.
Cale turned from where he’d been standing in the corner, his back to the room, his broad shoulders straight with tension. His eyes were bright—too bright. And yet the skin around them was tight. He was fully, formally dressed, but his clothing was wrinkled, less than perfect.
He looked weary—and well he should, based on what she’d witnessed. Narcise’s stomach threatened to revolt just then and despite the fact that she hadn’t fed for who knew how long, she knew something would come up anyway.
“Narcise,” Giordan said. His voice was rough and low. But anger and command hummed beneath.
Why was he angry with her?
She couldn’t—she fled the room, the world spinning into hot red nausea. She couldn’t think, couldn’t comprehend, could hardly feel. Nothing but the raging whirl of her emotions.
He came after her, out of the chamber into a corridor that was uncharacteristically deserted. “Narcise.”
His scent came with him—and with it, a revolting mix of opium, hashish, whiskey, blood. And Cezar. She steadied herself against the wall, trying to block the images that assaulted her, that matched the stew of debauchery emanating from him. The scents of his betrayal.
Somehow, from the depths of herself, she managed to find words. His words. “‘It’s you, Narcise. It’s only you.’” She threw them back into his face, the ones that had sustained her for weeks. “You disgust me.”
“By the Devil, you can’t truly believe—”
“I don’t have to believe. I saw. You.” Her voice broke and she felt herself falling back into that chasm of desolation and grief, a wh
irlwind of blackness. Disbelief and pain. Such pain. She had to get away from him. A roaring filled her ears, the deep, dark roar of hatred and agony. “Get away from me.”
He stepped toward her, grabbing her arm. “Do you have any idea what I’ve done for you?” His voice raw, his face, terrible, was close to hers. She hardly heard the words, for they were lost in the horrible swirling scent of blood on his breath, the smells of depravity and sweat and other darkness.
She talked over him, the roaring in her mind and heart blocking his words as she spewed her pain onto him. “You’ve completely destroyed me. Something even my brother wasn’t able to do, in decades.” She jerked her arm from his fingers with a sharp movement, turning away, starting back down the corridor. “Get away from me.” Her voice threatened to break, but she wouldn’t allow it. “Get away.”
He’d said she was strong. Oh, he had no idea how strong she was. Her hand closed over a doorknob and she turned it, not caring where it led, hardly aware of what she was doing. Have to get away from him.
“By the Fates, Narcise, listen—”
“I can’t bear—” She shoved a hand over her mouth to hold back the vomit, and stumbled through the door. As she slammed it behind her, falling against it, trying to breathe something other than him and his depravity, he slammed against it, rattling it in its hinges.
And then he was gone.
He didn’t remember leaving Cezar’s subterranean residence after those nights of hell.
In retrospect, a decade later, Giordan wondered that the man even allowed him to do so—but then, of course, by that time, Cezar had gotten all that he’d wanted.
At least, for the moment.
With Narcise’s hate-filled, witchlike visage burning in his memory, her acid words screaming in his mind, Giordan found himself raging blind and lost through the streets. Violence pounded through him, his abused body weak and overused, his hands, his very skin a reeking reminder of the hours and days past.
