Midnight Kiss

by Nancy Gideon

  And as much as that alarmed her, it angered Arabella more. “Well, she’s not going to take you from me!”

  He said nothing.

  She swallowed her panic. It went down hard. “But she’s going to try, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.” He wished there was some comfort he could give her, but there wasn’t. She had no idea, none at all, of what they were dealing with. “Arabella, you must promise me that you will not go out alone once the sun sets.”

  “Why?” she demanded, somewhat hysterically.

  “She will try to use you to get to me.” He sounded so calm, so matter-of-fact. As if such behavior was inevitable and acceptable. Well, it wasn’t to her.

  Arabella took a shaky breath. “Who does she think she is? I’ll not allow her to interfere this way. I’ll not be kept a prisoner—”

  Louis grasped her by the arms. His fingers bit deep with a hard desperation. “This is not a game, Bella. These people are fiends. They will hurt you. They will do worse, if they can. Do not be foolish enough to think yourself safe.”

  “But you can keep us safe, can’t you?”

  He looked down into her great trusting eyes and wanted to weep and wail from his own weakness. “I don’t know, Bella. I don’t know.” And he held her, wrapping her tightly in his arms, crushing her to the cherishing beat of his heart. What had he done? What dreadful jeopardy had he brought into her life?

  “Louis,” she whispered against the warmth of his throat. “Louis, make love to me. Give me something that they can never, ever take away.”

  He held her for a moment, not sure he could manage the degree of attentiveness necessary while all his thoughts were plagued by troubles. But then she shifted within his arms, her body moving against his in a sensual ripple. Hands that had clutched him began to caress, drifting along his shoulders, through his hair, turning his head so she could claim his mouth with her own needy kisses. Passions provoked and pooled hot in an instant. Perhaps it was the underlying panic that fueled the urgency of the moment, the desperation that chafed desire to a burning intensity. Whatever it was, it was irresistible and immediate.

  “I love you, Bella,” he mouthed into her hurried breaths. And he busied himself, unpinning her headdress, unfastening her bridal gown just as she was pushing at his coat and vest and shirt, baring him to the waist. She made an appreciative sound and let her palm rub over the strong swells and sleek curves of his upper body. He was powerfully made, and the feel of hard muscle and fit man did much to soothe fears and flame her needs. For a moment, she leaned into him, content to absorb the heat and scent and mystery of him.

  “Don’t be afraid, my love.” He’d skimmed her down to the wisp of her chemise. Her skin glowed warm and beckoning beneath it. With his hands upon either soft thigh, he began to gather the fabric upward with the gradual inch of his fingertips until they rested on supple flesh. Then with bunched hem in hand, he slowly lifted the frail garment over her head and let it settle like a mist to the floor. His breath expelled unevenly. All she wore were clocked stockings and the tiny crucifix.

  When he hesitated, she lifted her head to meet his taut and tender gaze. His eyes were a deep green-gold. Steeped in a conflict of eager want and judicious care, he was worried about her innocence, and she smiled.

  “I am afraid, my lord husband, afraid I have no more patience. Will you take me to our bed, or must I drag you?”

  “You need not apply force.”

  And she gasped as he hugged her up and walked with her to the bedstead as her feet dangled off the ground. When he laid her out on the coverlet, she wasn’t content to assume a passive role. Her hands framed his face, pulling until he came down to satisfy her needy lips. And when she was quite thoroughly pleased with his kisses, she began an immodest quest to learn him well. Threats of danger and the world itself as existed outside their door no longer mattered.

  Louis rolled to his back and let her explore and experiment. He was bemused by her boldness and aroused by her innocent seduction. Her touch adored him, stealing away his breath, his heart, his control, as it rubbed and circled in its inexorable move down to the snug fit of his breeches. He thought her maidenly status would halt her there, but she showed no sign of hesitation as her hand fit to the thick jut of him outlined by the cling of stockinette. His teeth ground as sensation jolted beneath her provoking caress.

  “Louis, these must go.” Her voice was a husky rumble as she plucked at the band of his breeches. He stared up at her, purely amazed and somewhat shocked, for all his years.

  “Madame, are you certain you’ve not done this before?”

  Looking slightly incensed, she replied, “No. Why would you ask?”

  “Because a female in your circumstance does not display your uncommon confidence.”

  “Should I become more missish, then? Would you prefer I succumb to vapors and cringe under the covers? You have the experience, my lord husband. Tell me how it is done.” And she crossed her forearms atop his chest and leaned upon them, waiting for his answer.

  “I prefer how you are doing it. I was not correcting, only curious.”

  “Well, sir, I was raised a physician’s daughter and taught that one gives careful study to that which arouses the curiosity.”

  He smiled. “And I arouse you, little one?”

  “Indeed, husband. Indeed you do.”

  “Then far be it from me to stand in the way of science.” He lifted his hips and squirmed out of his breeches and drawers, tossing them carelessly off the foot of the bed. “Continue your observation.”

  Despite her aggressive claims, Arabella was slow in shifting her attention downward. She knew the basics of anatomy, of course, and had wickedly appeased her curiosity on one of her father’s figures of dissective study. But that gentleman was in far from a responsive state and in no way prepared her for the difference a living, breathing passion could affect the male physique. And Louis Radman’s difference was quite impressive. She touched him, and she heard his breath pull in raggedly. Her own respiration was altered to an extreme. She stroked him, enchanted by the feel of warm satin-sheathed steel pulsing life within the cup of her hand. After several minutes of handling him thusly, his knees began to shift and shake and his toes to curl. Abruptly, she had her wrist taken and pulled away.

  “Bella, you must stop.”

  His voice was so strained, she looked up at him in alarm. His eyes were closed in a face hollowed by tension. He was breathing in quick, shallow pants through parted lips. She didn’t understand his distress and said so.

  “You’ve not hurt me, little one, just pushed the point of pleasure too close to conclusion.”

  “Oh. Oh! Yes, of course, we should reserve the spill of fluids for the seeding of life.”

  His eyes came open then, darkened by a sharp shock of dismay when they met hers, and suddenly swimming in realization and remorse.

  “What is it, Louis?”

  “I’m sorry, Bella. I—I don’t know that I can create life. We should have discussed this before we married, but it truly never occurred to me until just now. We both wanted children, and I never—I never stopped to consider I might not be able to provide them for you.”

  Arabella tried hard not to betray her anguish. She forced a calm physician’s tone. “Did your previous condition render you sterile?”

  How to explain, that life hadn’t been possible from death? He’d died in the 1500s, and the power of reproduction with him. But hadn’t he been reborn? Wasn’t new life flowing through him? And with that renewed vitality, wouldn’t all be working as it once had? His body was repairing itself with a natural healing. Could he assume it was producing the fertile links to procreation as well?

  “I don’t know, Bella. And I can see how I’ve disappointed you. It is your right to expect a child and your right to withdraw from this marriage if I ca
nnot—”

  Her hand covered his mouth, halting the grievously given words.

  “No,” she told him with a strong conviction. “I wed you because I wanted you. If we can grow a child between us, how wonderful that will be. If not, we will still have one another. Louis, I swear to you, that will be enough for me. I swear I will have no regrets.”

  He searched her expression for the truth of that claim, then, with a soft cry, pulled her down to his desperately hopeful kisses. With her passionate response to fuel him, Louis rose to reverse their positions, leveling her onto her back as he slid over her. She moaned into his kisses, arching up as they trailed hotly to the sensitive ache of her breasts, crying out his name as his hands skimmed up her inner thighs, parting the way for his intimate possession.

  She was too desirous to feel afraid as he pushed against the barrier of her innocence. The sudden pain was unexpected, but the swift, sure thrust of paradise that followed eclipsed all else.

  “Oh, Louis!”

  He was gentle. At first that was a comfort, then an unbearable provocation. His kisses mingled hurried breaths and sultry words, foreign love words that excited with their very strangeness and intensity. He teased her with sweeps of his mouth over hers, making her reach out to him for a deeper connection. He tantalized her with the languid rush and ebb of his body over and within her, lingering, withdrawing until she was ever at a restless edge of anticipation. She held to him, running her hands over his heated skin in rough, impatient strokes, wanting the sensation of oneness to penetrate to the soul. He’d said he couldn’t give her magic... oh, how wrong he’d been.

  Louis felt the enchantment too, sparked by a friction that seared with every move. Even as a vampire, he’d never felt so powerful. Then, his strength had come from psychic control instead of this exquisite physical communion. He’d had heightened senses before, but they were always so concentrated that much of the smaller pleasures escaped him. Arabella’s passion fed him. Like the tiny gasping cries she made at the pinnacle of each thrust. Like the curl of her fingertips digging frantically for purchase below his flexing shoulder blades. Like the way her body rose and fell beneath him, a seething tide at the command of his forceful rhythm. She didn’t feel frail to him now. She was strong and hot and vigorous, a supple female coupling with complete abandon. His mate, his wife, pleasing him and taking pleasure from him in the most basic and private human fashion. And it was every bit as intoxicating as taking blood.

  Abruptly, the pattern of Arabella’s response altered. Her breaths grew broken and needy. Her hands groped for and found his where they were spread wide on either side of her tossing head, fingers lacing through his and gripping tight. The way she said his name, all wild and free and wonderfully keening as satisfaction spasmed through her, was the most profoundly beautiful thing he’d ever heard. And the feel of her, hot, wet, and grasping greedily around him, was enough to fracture his own building tension into hard, will-dissolving shudders. As desire erupted into a fierce liquid stream, Louis closed his eyes and offered an awkwardly unfamiliar prayer. God, restore my humanity to the point where I can provide her with what she deserves.

  ARABELLA WASN’T thinking about seeding babies or fearsome strangers or anything beyond the heavy lethargy encasing her entire being. A wonderful languor stemmed from the heat of her husband above her and yet within her. Wanting to hold to both for as long as she could, she embraced him with a contented sigh and held his damp head to her shoulder.

  The feel of his ragged breath against the side of her throat was so incredibly intimate, a warm, forceful stroking that brought a shiver to her already strained senses. She whispered his name as she felt his tongue rasp lightly along her skin and his lips press hard enough to experience the pleasurable pulse he’d stirred within her. Then, suddenly, he pulled away, lifting up as if alarmed, only to be calmed by the sight of her smile.

  “Louis, if I live to the eternity you once promised, nothing will ever be as glorious as this night. If die tomorrow, I’ll have no regrets.”

  Her words appeared to disturb him, though she hadn’t meant them to. “We’ll have many such nights, Bella, and many tomorrows.”

  “I know. I just wanted you to know how very well loved I feel right now.”

  His expression grew even more intense. “I do love you, Bella, as I’ve never loved anyone or anything. You must believe it was never my intention to place you in any peril.” He was speaking of the ominous couple again, and that brought another tug of doubt to Arabella’s mind.

  “And was this night as memorable to you as yours with her?” She spoke it softly, without rampant emotion, without impassioned tears. She simply needed to know.

  “I have forgotten how it was with her.” A lie, but he could never tell her the truth of it. It wasn’t her feelings he thought to spare, but her basic sensibilities. And his shame, the shame that had never dulled in all the centuries past. Nothing he wanted to discuss with his new bride on their wedding night.

  “But she hasn’t, has she, Louis?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Arabella rubbed over the intriguing planes of his face, thinking again that he was a most amazing-looking man. And an amazing lover. So she said, almost sympathetically, “I can’t really say I blame her. But she lost you to me, and I will never give you up to anyone.”

  A small smile touched his lips, then he moved off her and cuddled her up to his side, aching with the fierceness of his love for her. Terrified that their nights and tomorrows were in limited supply.

  HE WASN’T SURE what woke him. It was dark. A fire burned faintly to illuminate the room. The warm figure burrowed against him was his wife, Arabella, sleeping soundly, her breathing a soft, sonorous whisper.

  After giving the perimeters of the room another quick scan, Louis turned toward the woman at his side. Her back was to him. He touched her, letting his palm slide on the silky flesh of her thigh. So soft. He leaned to press his lips to one gently curved shoulder. So sweet. He forced his tension down, letting the hot build of desire slip in to take its place.

  Then, with a gasp, he came away from her, sitting bolt upright.

  It came again. A scratching. Faint, soft scratching at the window’s leaded panes. His gaze was drawn there in a dragging horror. What was behind the heavy bunch of drapery? If he went to the window and pulled back the curtains, what would he see? Bianca, floating on a mist of her own making, her face pale, her eyes red and gleaming? Gerardo, hovering on the night air, smiling with an arrogance that displayed his wickedly sharp incisors? Something wanted in, inside where his new life could to be torn to bloodless ruin. All he had to do was ease out of the bed, cross to the window, open the drapes, open the casements, and say, Yes, come in.

  And he found his feet on the chill of the floorboards. The sensation shocked him. He wasn’t aware of moving, of responding to the suggestion.

  No!

  He rolled back onto the bed in a denying panic, reaching for Arabella and the comfort she’d provide, when the voice stopped him.

  Gino.

  Bianca.

  He crouched upon the covers, panting softly.

  Gino, il mio amore.

  The voice reached inside, caressing, alive, unholy. It wasn’t the compulsive command to one enslaved nor the mental communication between peers. It was a seducing whisper, insinuating, seeping, seeking control. How strong she was. He’d forgotten how strong.

  Gino, have you forgotten as well how it once was for us? Have you forgotten how you wanted me? Don’t you want me now? Don’t you want me in your arms? Don’t you want my kisses?

  No!

  You wanted me, Gino. You want me still.

  No...

  Enough to lie for me, to kill for me.

  No...

  Remember.

  It hit him like a sensual wave, those memories, in a
force hard enough to drive him down upon his back where he arched in a helpless frenzy. The power of those sensations, rippling through him, over him, beneath him, a power that was hot and icy and irresistible.

  “No.”

  Yet he gasped into the fitful tremors, eyes closing in rapture, lips parting as the invitation lingered there, a desperate entreaty, a yearning like no other. Why fight, when the surrender yielded such glorious splendor?

  “No.”

  Gino, you want me. Let me come to you. Let me lie with you. Let me love you. Then softer, more beckoning still, Louis.

  His legs were shifting, his body trembling and dappled with sweat. Weakness of mind overwhelmed him. The sense of wanting, needing, so compelling, so...

  Deadly.

  God! She was inside him, working her vile control upon his will.

  “No!”

  “Louis?”

  The light touch of fingertips upon his shoulder made him leap with sudden terror.

  “No!”

  “Louis, it’s Arabella!”

  He blinked once again, and then her worried features came into focus.

  “Bella.”

  His arms went about her, his clasp tight and urgently shivering.

  She felt his rough kisses upon her shoulder, against her jaw, her temple, her brow, and finally, hungrily, upon her mouth. Bruising, forceful. Desperate.

  “Louis, it’s all right.”

  His hands stroked her face and hair. They were shaking. His words were shaking, too. “Bella, love me. Love me hard and long. Don’t let me go. Don’t let me go. Make me forget.”

  Because she was deeply alarmed by his intense agitation and feared with a womanly intuition that his former lover was somehow behind it, Arabella reacted with an instinctive fervor. Her return kisses were possessive and passionate, scattering in a determined rain over the taut angles of his face, sealing his uneven breaths beneath a firm, mastering press.

  And because he was vulnerable, she became strong, assuming a superior position as she kissed and caressed him, straddling him with a boldness she couldn’t have imagined in her innocent’s mind. She surrounded him with her love, with her heat, with her desire, moving recklessly until friction and fullness wrought pleasure chafing on the edge of pain. Until the panic glittering his gaze gave before a darkening of sensual surrender. His hands clasped at her slender waist, complementing, compelling a stronger surging tempo that goaded him to a sudden sharp relief. And even as she rode out the jerk of his completing spasms, he was moving, tumbling her beneath him so that with several more pounding thrusts she reached a similar point of fulfillment.