Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Portia Da Costa
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
1. Folly
2. The Eyes of the Night
3. The Magic Interior
4. Reassurance
5. An Audience with the Count
6. Nemesis
7. Curiouser and Curiouser
8. Indigo Secrets
9. Japanese Whispers
10. Inertia
11. Open House
12. Help at Hand
13. Perils and Pleasures
14. Preparations for Departure
15. The Freeing
Epilogue
Copyright
About the Book
At an archduke’s reception, a handsome young nobleman falls under the spell of a malevolent but irresistible sorceress. Two hundred years later, Belinda Seward also falls prey to sensual forces she can neither understand or control. Stranded by a thunderstorm at a remote Gothic priory, Belinda and her boyfriend are drawn into an enclosed world of luxurious decadence and sexual alchemy.
Their host is the courteous but melancholic André von Kastel; a beautiful aristocrat who mourns his lost love. André has plans for Belinda – plans which take her into the realms of obsessive love and the erotic paranormal.
About the Author
Portia Da Costa is one of the most internationally renowned authors of erotica.
She is the author of Continuum, Entertaining Mr Stone, Gemini Heat, Gothic Blue, Gothic Heat, Hotbed, In too Deep, Kiss it Better, Shadowplay, Suite Seventeen, The Devil Inside, The Stranger and The Tutor; as well as being a contributing author to a number of Black Lace short-story collections.
For more information about Portia Da Costa’s books please visit www.portiadacosta.com
Also by Portia Da Costa:
Gemini Heat
The Tutor
The Devil Inside
Continuum
The Stranger
Hotbed
Shadowplay
Entertaining Mr Stone
Gothic Blue
Portia Da Costa
This one is dedicated to the memory of Boy, a true friend.
Prologue
IT HAD ALL begun at the archduke’s reception, André recalled. Among the sparkling smiles, the dazzling wit and brilliant music. André had been standing on the sidelines, waiting for his beloved Arabelle to make her entrance, when an unexpected chill had cooled his blood.
Looking up, he had seen a woman passing by, her white hand on her attentive partner’s arm. He had thought nothing of it at first; the room was full of such sumptuously-dressed women, and a great many of them were also very beautiful. But then she had turned around and looked straight in his direction and his shivers had changed instantly to a fever. Her luminous green-eyed gaze had cut right through him to his vitals, warming his body in exact proportion to its previous peculiar coolness.
The unknown woman was breathtaking, and her manner more imperious than that of a queen. In a swagged and tiered gown of red velvet with gold embroidery, her shape was delicate yet magnificently voluptuous. Her richly-coiled black hair had a heavy bluish lustre that caught the lamplight as she nodded slightly to him.
Who are you? he thought, then felt bereft as she began to move away from him, her crimson dress like a vivid banner among the crowds.
A few minutes later, after questioning a passing acquaintance, André had discovered the name of his raven-haired enchantress. She was Isidora, Countess Katori, and her reputation was as dangerous as her beauty. Rumour had it that she practised the magic arts.
This is wrong, he told himself, as his eyes hunted for her across the ballroom, then followed her through the dance’s complex figures. This is wrong, he thought, gritting his teeth and trying to ignore his suddenly aching loins.
I should not want her. I must not want her. I’m in love and in a week I’ll be betrothed. It was only a matter of moments before his exquisite Arabelle would be here. Witty, radiant Belle, to whom he would gladly pledge his mortal soul.
And yet still the flamboyant countess ruled his flesh. His guilty heart hammered when, from out of nowhere, she appeared like a djinni before him, her full red lips forming a smile that left him speechless.
‘Sir, do we not know each other?’ she enquired, her voice low and teasing as she doffed a minute curtsey.
‘I … I do not think so,’ he answered, bending over her hand to kiss it, and discovering that her skin was fine as silk. ‘Count André von Kastel, madam. At your service,’ he said, releasing her, but reluctant to let her go.
‘Isidora, Countess Katori,’ she replied, her faint accent making her name a long caress. With a small graceful gesture, she nodded towards the nearby dancers, then turned from him and walked away towards them, apparently confident that he would simply up and follow her.
Vaguely ashamed of himself, André fell in step behind her, feeling like a callow boy in his first pursuit of love’s wild passion. This daring, handsome countess had effortlessly made a youth of him, but to his chagrin, she had also made him hard. His state of high arousal was surely visible to all around him, but though it bothered him, there was nothing he could do about it. And as they began the measure, he soon forgot to care.
Why me? he thought as they danced. His attire, a plain but well-cut coat and breeches, was subdued compared to most around him, and his title was just one among many others. His looks, though pleasant, he admitted, were not what he would have called outstanding or remarkable. Why on earth had the countess chosen him, a grey-eyed, brown-haired minor aristocrat of somewhat modest height, when the room was awash with dashing dukes and elegant princes?
As the dance progressed, he longed to press himself against her. His swollen member seemed to seek her female heat. From time to time, as the countess found a score of sly ways to insinuate herself against him, he tried to clear his mind of his lust for her and think of Arabelle. He imagined the shock and sadness on his dear one’s face as she found him like this with another; he pictured the distress in her lovely eyes as he betrayed her. It appalled him, and yet still he felt helpless. Each time her image came to him, like a vision of grace and salvation, the woman on his arm appeared to sense it, and re-double her sinuous efforts to addle his wits.
Countess Isidora’s perfume was like a dense musky cloud that hung around them, and when he thought of Arabelle, the odour subtly thickened. It filtered into his brain like a rich miasmic mist and charged his mind with exciting images that shocked him. Debauchery. Unnatural acts. Frenzied, bestial couplings. He imagined himself naked and stretched out over the countess’s smooth white body, her firm breasts jutting upward against his chest. And when, under cover of the fast-moving dance, her lips touched his throat for just one second, he moaned and fought for breath, his senses reeling.
It had been but one brief contact, yet incredibly he felt her serpent tongue all over him. She was tasting him; savouring his skin and its hot, manly flavour. No part of his anatomy escaped her, no secret was left unexamined. Her proximity overpowered him and sapped his will.
Half out of his mind, and unable to resist her, he imagined her lapping his belly and his privates. Her long devious tongue would wind seductively around his member, finding new areas of near-painful sensitivity.
Giddy with desire, André could not believe the messages of his senses. It was difficult to believe that they were still only on the dancefloor. In his dreams they were in a huge bed somewhere, their limbs thrashing, their mouths mating like rabid dogs. When his knees betrayed him, he stumbled towards her and half fell.
‘Shall we take the air, my lord? Yo
u seem a little uncomfortable,’ the countess murmured. Then, without further consultation, she led him towards a long, shadowed balcony.
Within seconds, all André’s lustful prayers were answered. Her red mouth plundered his, her tongue darting into it and exploring, while her sure hands led his beneath her skirt. Through swathe after swathe of heavy lace and crumpled silk, he was drawn, ever upward and ever inward, until finally his shaking fingers met her treasure. He felt a nest of crisp, wiry curls, then folded flesh rendered slippery by her juices. She was a furnace, a pool of liquid satin, and her soft membranes flickered salaciously beneath his touch.
Almost numb with delight, André described a small movement with his fingertip, and was rewarded by a savage growl of pleasure. His elegant, high-born countess was twisting her hips like a harlot, and grinding her sex against the fulcrum of his hand. Her churning, scissoring thighs caressed his wrist.
‘Pleasure me, my lord,’ she demanded, rocking and swaying. ‘Put your fingers inside me, before I faint.’
Delirious, André obeyed her, his nose and mouth filled with her spicy, rising vapours. Through what appeared to be a haze, an inexplicable thin blue nimbus, he saw her beautiful face slackened by lust. Somehow – by sleight of hand or by sheer force of will – she had released her breasts from her constricting velvet bodice, and their unfettered fullness gleamed like two pale fruits in the cool night air. Her teats were dark, the brownish-purple of drying blood, and he swore he could see them harden before his eyes.
‘My lord!’ she cried, her voice slurring as her nectar wet his hand. ‘Enter me! I crave it!’
He pushed first one fingertip, then a second, inside her, and her whole body shuddered, then bore down. Her weight and the force of her made his wrist begin to ache, and to brace himself he set his feet apart. But still she was unsatisfied by his efforts.
‘Fill me, my lord,’ she moaned, her white teeth nipping at his neck. ‘Give me more!’
He bore in with three fingers, then with four, and the countess keened like a she-wolf in full heat. Her long, perfumed thighs opened wider to give him access, then closed and locked unyieldingly around his arm.
‘I spend, my lord! I spend!’ she shrieked, untroubled at being heard by nearby dancers. The silky product of her rapture drenched his palm.
Only seconds later, she was down on her knees before him, her nails ripping at his breeches to free his member. As soon as he was liberated, she laughed wildly and plunged forward, wrapping her crimson lips around his tortured rod.
Never in all his days had André experienced an enclosure so sublime. The throat he was buried in seemed to undulate around him as if each muscle had a distinct and separate life of its own. She was almost swallowing him whole, he realised, and her sharp teeth were pressing perilously against his shaft.
‘Madam, I beg of you,’ he groaned, half in terror, half in ecstasy, his body thrilled to greater hardness by the danger.
Her only answer was to reach in and grip his ball-sac, adding another layer of jeopardy to his predicament. He buried his fingers in the coils of her hair, trying desperately to control her, but he couldn’t prevent her from engulfing him even deeper.
Abruptly, in the heart of his pleasure, André felt an icy surge of revulsion, of shame and betrayal, and at the moment of release, he thought of Belle, mouthing her name and picturing her perfect jewel-like smile. How could he have done this? How could he deceive her, damage her, break her faith? As he reached his peak, he despised himself profoundly.
He had little awareness of what happened in the next quarter of an hour or so, and of how they made their escape from the reception. All he remembered was a racing carriage and a moonless night. The countess’s witch-like presence was like a drug to him, speeding up time and throwing a veil across his vision.
When they reached her luxurious apartments, she turned and surprised him. Instead of leading him straight to her bed and stripping him, she paused, smiled obliquely, and made the gesture of an accomplished hostess.
‘A glass of wine, my lord?’ she queried. ‘The pleasures of the flesh are prone to make me thirsty, and I am sure they must do the same for you.’
‘Yes, thank you, Countess,’ replied André, feeling as profoundly out of his depth as he had done earlier. He accepted a goblet-like wine glass that was as large and ornately decorated as a liturgical chalice, even though a panicked inner voice entreated him not to.
The wine had a heavy, unusual taste – somewhat bitter and vaguely alkaline on the tongue – but he was, he realised, just as thirsty as she had suggested, so he drank it down despite its strange flavour.
When he put aside the glass, composed his thoughts and turned around, his companion was naked. Catching his breath, André looked back towards his goblet in confusion. At the reception, their dealings had been so hurried and so fumbled that he could almost believe he had only dreamed what had happened, but now he knew it was all true, and that the pale, curvaceous body before him was a prize he had won; his to enjoy, ripe and ready for the taking.
Yet he still hesitated.
‘The wine … It tastes –’ He swirled the pungent residue around his mouth ‘– tainted.’
Isidora looked at him, her green eyes level and unblinking. ‘I did add a little tincture to it, my lord, something of my own devising.’ She smiled narrowly as he thrust the goblet along the sideboard and away from him. ‘But do not worry, it is simply to increase your pleasure.’ She paused delicately. ‘It will enable you to endure.’ Her tongue darted out, more serpent-like than ever, it seemed to André, as the room began to tilt ever so slightly. ‘With this in your veins you will last for ever, my dear Count.’ She began to laugh in a wild and odd way.
André felt unsteady now, and as they had at the reception, his knees began to buckle precariously. Isidora flew to his side, then helped him towards a couch, one firm breast brushing his arm as he leant on her.
‘Who are you?’ he asked again, his head spinning as she deftly undressed him.
‘I am Isidora Katori,’ she said archly, flinging away his shirt then attacking his already torn breeches. ‘And very soon I will be your lover for all time.’
‘I … I do not understand,’ he stammered, suddenly longing to get away from her but not able to. His brain was sending messages that he should throw her off, grab his clothes and flee these apartments immediately; but bizarrely, his body was helping her disrobe him. And as his breeches came off and were tossed away after the shirt, his penis bounced up in a lewd salute.
‘You will,’ she said softly, her hands gliding fleetingly over his body before she turned away and poured him more wine. ‘Drink,’ she ordered, pressing the newly-filled goblet to his lips.
André experienced again that strange phenomenon – his mind issuing instructions while his body ignored them and did the opposite. Silently screaming ‘No!’, he drank the wine.
When the goblet was empty, Isidora took it from his lips and hurled it to the floor, where it smashed into a thousand glinting shards.
‘Now, my lord, you are mine,’ she cried, her voice strident as she flung herself across him. ‘We need only one final element to complete the process.’ With an animal groan, she sank down on to his penis.
The pleasure he felt inside her tight, wanton channel was even greater than that he had experienced in her mouth. Against his will, he writhed beneath her, bucking upward to increase his penetration, while Isidora worked his body without mercy. Her flawless white skin was streaked with shining sweat, and her face was a twisted mask of dark hunger. As he looked up at her, André felt his strength begin to ebb. His manhood was still rigid inside her, but elsewhere he felt a great and surging weakness, like a torrent of tidal water rushing through him. Somewhere in his very innermost centre, he experienced the sensation that every cell in his body was beginning to melt. He was expiring, being snuffed out, his life extinguished; and as he realised it his member leapt and shivered.
A weird, singing light beg
an to rise through every deliquescing part of him, and when it reached his brain, Isidora crowed in triumph, riding his release like a giant foaming wave.
I’m dying, André thought with an odd detachment, and knew that there was nothing he could do to stop it. With his seed still spurting, and his body still jerking, he breathed his last to the sound of Isidora’s laughter and the evil pulse of her unholy, gripping flesh.
But as blackness fell and his eyes closed, a stark cold replaced the fiery heat of sex and he saw an image of poignant horror in his mind.
It was Arabelle, his precious love, and she was calling to him. Her lovely face was glistening with a river of doleful tears and though she was nearby, he could barely hear her voice. There was a barrier of solid crystal set between them.
She’s gone too, André realised as it ended.
Arabelle is gone and we never were as one.
Chapter One
Folly
‘BLOODY THING! BLOODY bloody bloody thing!’ Belinda Seward kicked out viciously at the bumper of Jonathan Sumner’s car and wished the whole damned thing in hell. ‘What on earth are we going to do now?’ she demanded, wiping the rain off her face, and looking up into the glowering black sky.
At that moment the darkness above seemed to split in two, as if a giant hand had torn a velvet curtain. Forked blue lightning sheared wildly across the heavens in a bolt that seemed far closer than the last one had been. Belinda felt suddenly convinced that the elements themselves were after them, or at least after Jonathan’s ancient yellow Mini.
‘We could shelter in the car,’ offered Jonathan Sumner, pushing his wet, brown hair out of his eyes. It was a hopeless gesture because his hair, his clothes and every inch of his skin were all completely saturated. It had only been raining ten minutes but the pair of them were already soaked through to the bone.
‘Oh yeah? And get struck by lightning?’ enquired Belinda, knowing that all this wasn’t really Jonathan’s fault, but still needing to blame someone. The anger of the storm was getting to her, she realised; creating a tension that had to be released.
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