Blood Rhapsody

by Nancy Morse

  Pru moistened her lips. “Wine would be fine.”

  So, this was going to be easier than he thought. No need for an aphrodisiac-laced tea. Not even for his mesmerizing powers, he thought triumphantly. The crystal decanter clinked against the glasses when he poured. The blood-red wine swilled in the glasses as he carried them to the settee. He sat down beside her, not touching close, but near enough to throw her off her guard, which was what he wanted.

  She took a sip of the fortifying wine. “So, perhaps you will tell me about this skill you acquired in your homeland.”

  He just smiled at her. “All in good time.”

  “But you said…”

  “I did not say I would tell you about it.” Christ, no. If he did that, she would despise him and then he’d never get what he was after, namely, her soft, willing body in which to spill his lust. “What I said,” he went on evasively, “was that I could help your father regain his health. The method is of no importance. But I do recall that we had an agreement.” His green eyes glistened and the silky curve of his mouth was shadowed in the flickering candlelight. He caught her gaze with his and held it tight for many wordless moments before setting it free.

  He took a deep swallow of wine, then got up and walked to the window where the heavy drapes were pulled aside instead of drawn as was customary in most households at night. For several minutes he stood at the window, a dark angel gazing out at the night, a glittering figure in a ray of opalescent moonlight.

  “Do you feel it? The loneliness of the night?” He spoke against the pane, softly, but with a strange melancholy.

  “The nights are always difficult,” Pru whispered from across the room.

  He turned his face toward her with a look that seemed to say, so you understand.

  “But things always look better come dawn,” she said.

  Dawn. A signal for his retreat to the dark confines of his bed. The death sleep during which he was at his most vulnerable. Dawn. That cursed time of day when any notion he harbored about being remotely human was squashed under the thumb of daylight. Her mother’s death and her father’s illness may have given her an understanding of what it was to feel lonely at night, but she knew nothing of the torment he experienced day after wretched day with the crowing of the cock.

  “I’m sorry if something I said has upset you,” she said.

  Her voice brought him back from his beleaguered thoughts. He turned from the window and went to stand before the fireplace. “Memories,” he said, “have a way of coming back to haunt you at the most inopportune moments.”

  The orange flames caught his face in profile, shadow and light playing across his features, mouth drawn downward into an inexpressible frown, a wince in his eyes beneath the thick dark lashes. There was nothing cruel-looking about him now, but rather a helpless vulnerability and an expression of unfathomable sorrow.

  “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  He hesitated, unsure of how to answer.

  “Perhaps we could work on the suite tonight,” she said. “The Bach prelude has always had the power to lift my spirits.”

  Why was she being nice to him? Didn’t she know that he wanted to ravage her, and worse, to turn her into a creature like himself so that he would have a partner to combat the loneliness? Even now, just thinking about it, he could feel his eye teeth straining and called upon every ounce of willpower he possessed to keep them at bay and her smooth white neck intact. He placed his glass down on the mantle and strode to where she sat and knelt before her on one knee.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” he demanded.

  Pru drew back at the sudden shift in his bearing. “I…I…my father…”

  “Oh Prudence, for God’s sake, cut the pretense. Yes, your father. But why are you really here? Shall I tell you?”

  She started to rise in protest, but his hand clamped over her shoulder, forcing her back down. “You are here because you cannot deny what you feel. Just as I cannot deny what I am.”

  The way he said it made her look at him intently. She remained strangely composed under the grip of his fingers. “What you are? I don’t understand.”

  He laughed bitterly. “The world is a much crueler place than you can imagine. All you need to understand is this.” He ran his palms under her dress and up her stockinged calves, the worsted wool soft beneath his touch, past the garters that held them in place, to the bare skin of her thighs. With nothing to obstruct him, his hand cupped her downy mound.

  Pru made no move to stop him, convincing herself that she was paralyzed with outrage when, in truth, she hungered for the mortifying pleasure she knew he could give her. She shivered at his touch, cold, so cold against the heat he aroused in her, and gasped for breath when his fingers slid between her folds and entered her, in and out, in and out, softly probing at first, then deeper and faster, drawing her into a maelstrom of desire from which she could not escape even if she had wanted to.

  With his thumb he teased the hardened nub, bringing forth a desperate groan as she writhed to the maddening sensations. And then his hands were again on her thighs, forcing them apart as he moved into the space between her legs and brought his head down to that spot that ached with want and need and reckless desire. Her head fell back against the settee and she closed her eyes with a helpless moan. It was happening so fast. Sitting still and alert one moment, flooded with dark hunger the next. She pressed her balled fist against her mouth to keep her cries from escaping as sensations as sharp as knives shot through her. Her body convulsed with shame and excitement at the way he was kissing her, exploring her most intimate place with his lips and his tongue, making her feel like a wanton trollop and not caring. Her back arched and her legs fell open of their own accord. She reached for his head, fingers grasping his long, tangled hair, and held him there, his face pressed against her, thrilling to the searing intimacy of his feather-light kisses and gently suckling lips, the hardened tip of his tongue demanding a response, and receiving it. Her hands slid forward to cup his face. The skin over his cheekbones was as smooth as a child’s. Yet this was no child’s work. This was the shocking seduction of a potent and powerful lover who possessed the ability to reduce her to a quivering mass.

  Just when she thought she would die of breathlessness, he lifted his head and rose to his feet. He stood there looking down at her, smiling wickedly. What a sight she must have presented with her skirt and shift pushed past her thighs, her legs open wide, making no attempt whatsoever to cover herself, her desire-narrowed eyes transfixed on the telltale sign of his arousal.

  His fingers tore at the pewter buttons of his trousers, sending one of them arcing across the room. With a cry of impatience he pushed them down below his knees, freeing his engorged phallus.

  Pru drew in her breath sharply. His body was beautiful, so perfectly made with its narrow waist, slim hips and lean well-muscled thighs. She had never before so boldly looked upon a fully naked man, except perhaps the statue of Michelangelo’s David that she and the other girls at Mrs. Draper’s had seen in a book, whose nudity had reddened their faces, though none had looked away. Her gaze took in all of him, and she bit her lip, partly in fear, partly in wonder, at the hardness and virility of him.

  He bent forward and moved his body into the space that beckoned between her legs, his stiffened member brushing the inside of her thigh as he forced his weight onto her and brought his mouth toward hers. For a few moments it lingered there, brushing her lips with his warm, wine-scented breath.

  In a distant corner of her mind she wondered fleetingly how it was possible to be so overcome with lustful, almost painful, passion one moment and in the ensuing moment filled with such tender feelings as his gently nuzzling lips induced. This man was capable of stripping all modesty from her, eradicating her virtue, leaving her defenseless against her own desperate longings and a slave to his. He has done this before to other women, drifted through her thoughts, but she didn’t care.

  His tongue moved over her
mouth as if she were a piece of honey-coated fruit to be savored slowly. When he took her lower lip between his teeth to gently nibble at its fullness, she briefly suppressed a giggle of joy before her mouth opened to receive his tongue.

  He tasted salty and sweet, and she realized with a start that it was the taste of herself that lingered on his mouth. The effect was as heady as too much wine. His kiss was tender, almost too tender, like a dream, enveloping her in a misty security that was shattered in the next instant when he pushed her back onto the settee and settled his body atop hers. His male hardness slid up her thigh and entered her.

  Her body yielded with a will of its own, accepting his penetration as if it were an eagerly awaited guest whose arrival was long overdue. She stirred her hips, tilting them upward to meet him. A muffled groan emerged from his throat as he pushed forward, filling her with his heavy, aching manhood. She moaned and twisted beneath him, gasping his name into the heated air as she grasped his bare buttocks and instinctively wrapped her legs around him, pulling him in deeper.

  His breathing rose and fell in great labored pants as he thrust into her, then withdrew to the point of agonizing anxiousness, the moistened tip of his phallus hovering just at her entrance. And so began a rhythmic assault, thrusting and withdrawing, thrusting and withdrawing, again and again, flooding her with fierce sensations until she was unable to silence the guttural sounds in her throat.

  She could not breathe. God help her. She was going to die. Her body jerked with ecstatic convulsions, wave upon wave of unbridled, undisciplined pleasure breaking over her, converging into one final explosion that caused her whole being to shudder. And still he thrust, harder and faster, with rough, frantic motions that brought them both to the brink of ecstasy.

  “Oh, God!” A cry such as she had never heard spilled from his lips. It was animal and human all at once and muffled against her neck as he clutched her tighter, pulling her so close she could scarcely breathe in an embrace that seemed far too powerful for a man to exert. She opened her eyes and looked at him, and what she saw frightened her. His face was contorted, lips curled back over flashing pointed teeth, the shadow of his dark lashes sweeping his cheeks before lifting to reveal eyes not green, but yellow-gold, the eyes of a wolf. She shut her eyes tightly against the fearsome spectacle.

  It’s the wine, she thought wildly. It had to be the effect of the wine that caused the terrifying hallucination.

  “Oh God!” he cried again. His body gave one last great shuddering tremor, and then went rigid as he collapsed against her. “Save me.” These last words spoken as a tormented plea, but to whom? To God? To her?

  She found the courage to open her eyes and look at him again. His face bore none of the hideous features she imagined she had seen. His eyes were closed and his lips were moving as if in silent prayer. Sucking in the air, he relaxed his hold on her and buried his face in the crook of her neck. She could feel the warm bursts of breath gradually easing and heard what she thought was a whimper, a sound barely audible over the roar of her own emotions. She clung to him, to this man-child of passion and sorrow, who had awakened her slumbering soul to the dark glory of lovemaking.

  After several long minutes he raised himself onto his elbow and looked down into her face. With the tip of his finger he traced the fire’s glow that shimmered along her temple, her cheekbones, and the corners of her prim little mouth. His voice was husky with the heaviness of satisfied desire. “That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?”

  The question should have seemed impudent and taunting, but the tone in which it was asked was sincerely inquisitive.

  Pru gazed into his beautiful face, the hard jaw, the full, strong mouth, the blinding emerald of his eyes, and answered honestly, “For too long I have denied this part of myself. I feel…” She looked past him, as if the words she was searching for were to be found floating in the air. “I never dreamed it could be so frightening and yet so…so…wonderful.” She turned her face away, embarrassed.

  With his thumb beneath her chin he guided her eyes back to his. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s quite natural, you know.” He lifted his weight off of her and rose from the settee, drawing her gaze along.

  Pru bit her lip and dared to ask, “Is it always so…big?”

  Nicolae glanced down at his still-swollen phallus and suppressed a chuckle at her refreshing innocence. Although she was technically no longer chaste, she was still very much a virgin in the ways of the world. Oddly, he had never really cared much for virgins. They were too much trouble, with their feeble protests of no, no, when they really meant yes, yes. He much preferred an experienced lover, one who made no pretense about what she wanted. Other than this delectable flower, the only other virgin with whom he’d been involved was the one he almost wed. But that was a very long time ago, when he was still a mortal man and the world did not look as old and tired as it did to him now. Why this one? He wondered. What was it about her that drew him like a hapless moth to the hungry flame? Now that de Vere was no longer in the equation, he was at a loss to comprehend the pull she exerted on his senses. Well, some things, he supposed, were to remain forever a mystery. Like the reason Fate had doomed him to wander this wasteland that was his life, brutally compelling him to despise himself for all eternity.

  He shoved the painful memory with its awful secret to the back of his mind. What could he say? That for ordinary mortal men it was common for the phallus to return to a flaccid state after the sex act, but that as he was no ordinary man, it was possible for him to retain a robust erection long after the act had been completed? Being the creature he was did have its advantages after all, the most obvious one a prolonged and insatiable appetite for sex.

  “Only when it sees nourishment it craves,” he said. Reaching down, he took her hand in his and drew her to her feet. “Let’s go upstairs to my bed. I desire to see you fully naked and to teach you things, very wicked things.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Oh, yes,” he breathed. “So much more.” He scooped her up into his arms and carried from the parlor, taking the stairs two at a time, his feet scarcely touching ground as if in flight.

  Within minutes their clothing lay in a jumbled heap on the floor. Standing beside the bed, he held her at arm’s length to look at her. Her body was fuller and richer than he had dared to hope, her heavy breasts like ripened fruit, their delicate rose-pink tips hardened with anticipation. Her hair had already come partially loose from the pins that held it. All it took was his deft touch to bring it spilling across her shoulders and down her back, a rich mass of dark burnished gold that shimmered in the candlelight. Reaching down, he cupped her mound, slipping his fingers into her. She was moist from his previous leavings, moist and hot and ready for him again. She could hide behind the meaning of her name, but there was nothing prudent about the way her body responded to his touch.

  He grasped his hardened member in his hand and rubbed it over her belly, sliding it downward where it sketched circles in the jet-black curls.

  This time, when he placed his hand on her shoulder, she dropped willingly to her knees. With its glistening tip he traced the line of her jaw, her cheek, and then her lips which parted willingly.

  His dusky lashes closed over his eyes and a husky groan came from his throat as her lips closed around him. She was the kind of woman who all her life had given willingly to others of her time, her attention, even her love. But never pleasure. Until now, using her lovely mouth and tongue like a seasoned courtesan, bringing forth his moans and whimpers and making him shudder all over. When he could stand no more of her maddening magic, he drew her back up to face him, and gave one of his heartless little smiles. “What a little tart you are,” he whispered.

  He turned her around and bent her over so that her hands were splayed atop the down mattress, and positioned himself behind her, running his hands over the smooth white skin of her bottom. Pushing her legs apart with his knees, he mounted her, slipping inside her warm wetnes
s and rejoicing in the tightness that closed around him like a glove. Leaning over her, he brought his face close to her ear, nipping at her lobe with his teeth and whispering in an animal-like growl, “This is how the wolves do it.”

  He pressed kisses to her shoulders and back and brought his mouth to her neck where his tongue flicked the fevered flesh. And then he bit her. Not hard enough to draw blood, just enough to taste the promise of it. She gave a little yelp and sucked in her breath, and for a moment tried to pull away. But he held on to her, his member sliding in and out of her silky wetness, the rhythmic motions gentling her.

  At last he pushed into her with one violent thrust, causing her to cry out. But he would not come. Not yet. He reached between her legs to her pleasure spot and rubbed and caressed until her sweet body strained and knew she was on the brink.

  Withdrawing, he pushed her down onto the mattress and rolled her over onto her back. Straddling her, he cupped her breasts in his hands and brought each one in turn to his mouth, suckling the engorged tips, biting none too gently with his teeth, making her writhe in exquisite torture. Smoky lashes cast a shadow over his cheeks when he lifted his head and gazed down at her.

  “Nicolae,” she gasped, her breath coming hot and fast as she curled her fingers around his arms.

  The sound of his name startled him, spilling from her lips as naturally as it did. He lifted her breasts in his hands and brought them close together. Slipping his heated maleness between them, he said breathlessly, “Is this what you want?” But he knew it wasn’t.

  “Yes. No.”

  “Tell me,” he demanded in a gruff whisper as he pumped his hips.

  “I want you inside me. Please. Oh please. Now.”

  All pretext of tenderness fled as he slid his eager maleness toward her entrance and came into her with a violent acquiescence. He took her with all the viciousness that was in him, sating his lust and pouring all of his terrible anger and sorrow and pain into her.