“I won’t go back on my word.” Some of the tension eased from her shoulders and she quivered beneath his relentless touch. “Even if I wanted to.”
His middle finger probed the slick folds of her pussy. His cock throbbed to possess her. The need was as powerful and all-consuming as the lust that had plagued him for the last two thousand years. Except this lust had nothing to do with blood.
Once again, he leaned over her back, his cock jammed against the mound of her flushed buttock. His lips grazed the curve of her ear.
“Then obey my command.”
She squirmed in frustration, but couldn’t prevent the fragranced cream that trickled from her pussy and soaked his probing fingers.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
He didn’t move and after a moment, she appeared to realize he expected her to obey him despite his weight upon her. Slowly she eased her legs farther apart and he shifted to accommodate her.
“Does that please you?” Her breathless voice pleased him as much as her spread legs.
“Next time,” he whispered against her heated cheek. “Do not make me tell you twice.”
Her pink lips curved into a smile of pure decadence. “I’m sure you will have to, Your Grace.”
He smiled against her scented skin and this time did not even wonder that she could amuse him so easily. It was, after all, one of the reasons she was still in his arms.
“Then your beautiful bottom will become intimately acquainted with my hand.”
Her silken slit twitched around his finger and she pressed her breast more securely into his hand. The weight of her breast, the hard peak of her nipple burning his palm, stretched his control to its outmost limits.
He rose abruptly and her smoky sigh of protest fueled his lust higher. Her buttocks were displayed for his pleasure, her legs spread wide at his command. Peeking between her thighs, her pouting pussy lips were pink and glistening with her juices.
For a moment, he envisioned falling to his knees and eating her luscious cunt. But his cock was so hard. He needed to be inside her. Needed to make her his.
He rubbed his palms over her arse cheeks, massaging her perfect flesh. Her musky scent cocooned them and with a primitive growl, he gripped his cock and thrust into her silken folds.
Her throaty cry stoked his lust. Her wet pussy sucked him into a tight embrace. He grasped her hips and slid farther inside and her slick channel rippled around his shaft.
Gods. It had never felt this good.
He rammed into her again, pushing her into the sofa. His balls slammed against her tender flesh and her gasps of impending climax filled his mind.
Her damp body gleamed in the candlelight. He gazed down at her naked back, the perfect curve of her arse, the way his cock was buried inside her quim. He wound one arm around her and his questing fingers found her sensitive clitoris.
“Come for me, Morana.” The words were guttural, torn from the depth of his being. “Let me feel your sweet pussy milk my cock.”
She convulsed around him, her tight sheath squeezing his shaft. His thigh muscles clenched and he rode her, his groin slapping against the round globes of her buttocks. Morana’s frantic gasps and breathless moans mingled with the scent of sex, and the subtle hint of crushed rose petals drifted in the air.
He thrust into her with such force he pushed her up onto her toes. He wound his arm around her waist, held her close, and his hot seed flooded her welcoming core.
Morana’s erratic gasps hurt her chest but she couldn’t move. Didn’t want to move. Her cheek was pressed into the sofa cushion; her arse was in the air. The duke held her around her waist, his body covering her back. His tortured breathing, in the aftermath of his violent climax, caused her pussy to spasm in exhausted response.
She was too sated to move. A strange peace filled her and she didn’t want to shatter it. She knew this was only a fleeting moment out of time. Knew that only too soon circumstances would wrench her from her lover’s side.
He pressed his lips against her shoulder. A tender kiss that touched her soul and an overwhelming sensation of rightness washed through her. She tried to ignore it. It could bring her nothing but heartache but the certainty refused to die.
The certainty that, despite the despised wager, this joining had always meant to be.
Chapter Twelve
Morana trailed her fingers across the elegant harp and as the haunting notes echoed around the music room she wondered where the duke was.
In the ten days since he’d brought her to his estate, she’d not once seen him during daylight hours. But as dusk fell he would appear, and the sun would rise.
She smothered a yawn and resisted the urge to curl up on one of the many sofas. No matter how late in the afternoon she slept—and each day she woke later—she could never quite extinguish the lingering sense of exhaustion that hovered like an ominous cloud beyond her reach.
Her soul was slowly dying.
For the first few days after the duke had brought her to his estate, her health had been unaffected. She convinced herself Thanatos had to be close by—perhaps even deliberately staying out of sight to allow her this moment of uninhibited pleasure. But as the week ended, so did her illusions.
As if a lifeline had been severed, her vitality diminished, a phantom vampire draining her veins and terror whispered through her soul.
Thanatos hadn’t been able to follow her. And while she enjoyed the novelty of living like a mortal woman with a man she was perilously close to falling in love with, her beloved was out in the world, alone, unprotected, and she had done nothing to save him.
And now, when the truth was so clear to her, she was physically unable to search for him.
She would have to ask for the duke’s indulgence. Soon, tonight, before it was too late. Before, because of her selfish desires, she was responsible for Thanatos’ death.
She needed to occupy her mind, needed something to distract the overwhelming dread consuming her senses that she’d never see Thanatos again. The duke had left her a dozen books in their bedroom but she had read them all. Surely he wouldn’t mind if she explored his library?
It was a massive dark-paneled room, and as servants lit countless candles, she admired the soaring arches, the impressive columns and magnificent fireplace. It was a masculine room and she could easily imagine him lounging on one of the sofas, enjoying cigars and brandy. Not that she’d seen him drink a great deal, which made him something of an oddity for a gentleman, and now she thought about it he scarcely seemed to drink at all.
She pushed the thought aside. It hardly mattered, and she wandered the length of the library, breathless with awe at the vast collection of rare first editions and numerous volumes he possessed written in Latin and—a delicious shiver raced along her spine—Greek.
If only Thanatos was here to share in this indulgent pleasure.
A corner alcove beckoned her. A sofa faced away from the room, angled toward the wall and above the credenza a life-size elaborately framed portrait hung.
Morana clutched the back of the sofa, fingers digging into the fabric, heart thundering in her chest as she stared at the portrait in disbelief.
The same golden-haired woman from the reception hall laughed in joyful abandonment. She arched against a Corinthian column, her Grecian inspired gown an exquisite shade of pale emerald.
But this was no Van Dyck. Although she had already guessed the master she sought out the name and her stomach churned as she read Raphael.
“I wondered how long it would take you to explore the library.”
The duke’s amused voice shattered her paralysis and she whirled to face him. His cravat was loosened and he looked relaxed. She might even go so far as to say he appeared happy to see her.
She could let it go. What did it matter? And yet it did matter, and she couldn’t let it go. Because something tugged at her senses, something dark, unnatural, and she didn’t want the insidious poison of doubt to tarnish her feelings for the duke.
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“Who is she?”
Instantly his features hardened and once again he was the autocratic aristocrat who had abducted her against her will.
“One of my ancestors.”
She maintained eye contact, even though his eyes no longer radiated warmth but instead reminded her of a frozen lake in the depths of a forest.
“She’s the same woman whose portrait hangs in the hall.”
His jaw tensed in clear displeasure. “My dear Morana,” his voice dripped condescension. “You know that’s impossible. This portrait was commissioned almost one hundred and fifty years before the Van Dyck.”
The uneven thud of her heart echoed through her skull, jarring her brain. She struggled to retain focus, not only on her scattered thoughts but the alarming way her vision had blurred.
“Why are neither dressed in the fashion of their day?”
“Should I know why they chose to play dress-up?” His lip curled in obvious disdain. “Perhaps their husbands had a fetish to see them as a Greek goddess.”
She pressed her hand to her forehead and wondered at the clamminess. “Where do you keep the portrait of your wife?”
“That’s none of your concern.” His voice was so cold it chilled her heart. But she couldn’t let it go.
“Did she also have blue eyes and golden hair?” She wanted him to deny it. As though it would make any difference to how he felt about her.
The icy silence ate into her limbs and froze her marrow. Finally, through the haze, she saw him shrug apparently bored by the conversation.
“Yes. She was the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen.”
His words were blades in her heart. Why, she couldn’t tell because she knew he didn’t love her, couldn’t possibly love her and yet she’d retained a small hope that their physical union meant more to him than simple animal lust.
But he was still in love with his wife. The wife whose ghost haunted him, haunted this house. She even haunted the portraits of the duke’s distant ancestors.
Morana forced her hand back to her side and tried to ignore the strange flutter high in her breast. But then, without warning, every candle extinguished.
Alexius battled to contain the rage flooding through every particle of his body. How dare she ask about his wife? She had no right. That she had noticed the similarities between the two portraits didn’t overly surprise him. Many, he knew, had done so over the years.
The difference being Morana was the only one to ever have confronted him about it.
He’d finish their liaison, travel to Italy and start the cycle of his existence, as his mythical son, yet again.
But would that be enough to stop Morana haunting his mind? Fuck. The thought of plunging his fangs into her sweet flesh and tasting her the way he wanted to taste her plagued him incessantly, and only when he was with her, talking to her or savoring the pleasures of her body did the bloodlust vanish.
It made no sense, and yet he relished the phenomenon for its very illogicality.
But only so long as she remembered her place. And her place was warming his bed, servicing his needs. Yes, he enjoyed her conversation but not if she started to—
“Morana.” He caught her before she hit the ground and stared into her chalky face with rising bemusement. If not for the shallow rise and fall of her breasts, he would think her a corpse.
Fuck that. She would not die. He scooped her into his arms and strode from the room, her head lolling against his shoulder. For a second, he was reminded of how she had felt in his arms the last time she was unconscious. When he had fought her stubborn mind and induced her to sleep.
“Travis.” He roared the name as he marched across the marbled hall. His trusted manservant, father of Evan, appeared within a blink.
“Your Grace.” Travis looked at Morana and his eyes widened. Alexius bared his teeth and Travis bowed his head by the slightest degree.
“No, I didn’t.” He growled the words for Travis’ ears only and didn’t miss the flicker of relief that brushed over the old man’s face. Irritation pounded. When had he ever fed his most base of lusts here in this ancestral home?
“I’ll fetch Jane for the Lady Morana,” Travis said.
Once in their chamber, Alexius laid her on the bed and then hovered over her. Why had she fainted? She wasn’t the type to faint. In fact she was one of the strongest women he’d ever come across. If not for his preternatural strength, there were times—such as when he’d bundled her into his carriage—when he doubted he would have been able to physically overcome her.
He glanced over his shoulder, to ensure he was alone, before pressing his ear against her breast. The faint beat of her heart reassured him, but only slightly because why couldn’t he hear her heartbeat from across the room? Why couldn’t he hear the rush of her blood through her veins, as he could usually?
“Your Grace.”
He straightened and scowled as Jane, almost as elderly as her husband Travis, bustled over and waved a bottle of smelling salts under Morana’s nose. She coughed, shuddered and her eyes flickered open.
An odd ripple coursed through his body, gravitating toward the pit of his stomach where it twisted into a painful knot. It had nothing to do with hunger. It had nothing to do with anything he could imagine.
“You fainted.” He made it sound like a crime of treasonable proportions.
“How do you feel, my lady?” Jane asked, smoothing Morana’s hair from her brow.
Morana stared directly at him. Her dark eyes were a little unfocused, as if she still struggled to escape from whatever had sent her spinning into oblivion, but they were still the most beautiful, captivating eyes he had ever seen.
A silent thunder of protest ripped through him. Betrayer.
His hands fisted, his heart lacerated. It had been over two thousand years. He wasn’t betraying his love just because he wanted to keep Morana by his side. Fuck it all, even if she lived until she was one hundred years old, that was nothing compared to the endless existence that stretched before him. The endless existence in which he could continue to mourn his one true love.
And Morana.
“Have you eaten?” He barked the words at her because he had to silence that last, treacherous thought from his mind. And Morana?
A tornado whipped through his chest, crushed his lungs. Morana was a distraction, nothing more. When she died, years from now, he would regret her passing as he did all the humans close to him over the centuries, but that was all. She wouldn’t leave a gaping chasm in the fabric of his soul because his soul had long ago decayed.
“Yes.” Her voice was hoarse. “I don’t know what happened. It’s never happened before.” She sounded confused, although her eyes were regaining focus.
“Your Grace.” Jane stared at him until he reluctantly tore his gaze from Morana. “If I might have a word?” She raised her eyebrows and surreptitiously jerked her head toward the door.
He didn’t want to leave Morana. In case she had another fit of the vapors.
“I’ll return directly,” he said, unable to stop glowering at her although in truth, he had the strangest desire to hold her in his arms until he was completely reassured she was recovered.
Once outside, Jane clasped his arm in a motherly gesture and he allowed such liberty only because she was Jane.
“Your Grace.” Her tone was low, urgent. “Are you absolutely certain you haven’t fed from her?”
He snatched his arm from her grip. “Do you think that’s something I might forget?”
Jane didn’t cower beneath his leashed anger as anyone else would. Why should she? She had been in his service from the moment of her birth and knew what he truly was, as had her father and grandmother before her. Her loyalty toward him was absolute. But sometimes her presumption irked him greatly.
“Her pallor is unnatural. And her lethargy increases by the day.”
“Her lethargy?” He flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture. “I exhaust her with my sexual demand
s. That’s nothing to concern yourself about.”
“Her lethargy,” Jane said, not rising to his bait, “is that of one whose energy is being drained from their soul.”
Gods, Jane was always so melodramatic. Just like her great-great-grandmother had been so many decades ago.
“Just medicate her, Jane.” He turned back to the door. “I don’t want her lying sick in bed. She’s of no use to me like that.”
“You should return her.”
He swung around and leveled Jane with a quelling look. “No.”
“Then she means something to you.”
He saw the gleam of speculation in her eyes and the barely disguised pleasure in her voice. He recalled Morana’s dark eyes and black hair, and struggled to replace them with eyes the color of a flawless summer sky and hair of purest gold.
He bared his teeth, allowed his fangs free reign. Jane didn’t even wince.
“All I want from her is what I can get from between her thighs.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Jane sounded like the perfect servant. And then shattered the illusion. “I understand her mind and ready tongue are of no interest to you at all.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I’m perfectly well.” Morana pushed back the satin sheet and eiderdown and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. The duke grasped her ankles and swung her back.
“Until Jane assures me you’re well enough to rise, then you stay in bed.”
“You don’t object being dictated to by your housekeeper?” Morana stared at him in disbelief as she tried to work out what was really going through that mind of his.
“Believe me, Jane is far more than my housekeeper.” His tone was dry, and the glance he shot her made no sense at all.
There was only one way she could be well again. And it didn’t involve staying in bed until her malady had passed.
“I need to see Thanatos.”
His countenance darkened. “No. You do not.”
Startled by his vehemence she stared at him. “Indeed, I do. It’s imperative I see him again. He’s my brother, and I—”
Bloodlust Denied Page 10
