The wistful expression on his face was so affecting that Belinda surged forward, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed his cheek, his throat and his cool chest. Now that she was accustomed to his chilliness, she began to find it exciting. She pressed even closer, forcing him back against the pillows, gasping with relief as his body moved against her. His penis was no warmer than any of the rest of him was, but at least it was imposingly erect.
‘You must have loved her very much,’ she whispered, rising up over him and looking down into his face. His eyes were closed; his expression was unreadable.
‘I love her still,’ he said, his lashes flicking up. His eyes were clear and frank, their blueness like the light of a distant star.
‘And you want me because I look like her,’ stated Belinda, swirling her pelvis and stimulating his engorged sex with her belly. She couldn’t understand why she wasn’t feeling jealous. Under any other circumstances she would have felt so.
‘Yes –’ He paused. ‘And no.’ He grinned, then grasped her hips, pulling her down, hard, against him. ‘It is difficult to explain … I know in my heart that you are not Belle, and yet you seem so much like her.’ He frowned, as if his own emotions were hard to comprehend. ‘To hold you like this is to experience something I thought was forever lost to me. And yet … and yet at the same time I know you are Belinda Seward, a new friend whose intelligence and beauty enchant me, and whose naked body excites me beyond measure.’ He shrugged, making his penis slip and slide against her hip. ‘I am at a loss to know what I feel, and what I should feel. You must bear with me, Belinda. I find this very strange.’
‘So do I,’ said Belinda, wanting to touch him and feel his hardness – to explore flesh that by any normal standards should be hot. ‘Everything’s strange here. The house is strange. Your servants are strange. Even time itself is strange. I know I should be scared to death –’ She paused, holding his brilliant, unnatural gaze, and fighting not to look away ‘– but I’m not. Even though the strangest thing of all here is you!’
‘You are right, Belinda,’ he said, staring up at her, his eyes unblinking. ‘So right. The source of all that is strange here is me.’ He moved again beneath her, inveigling his thigh between hers; opening her and letting her feel the strangeness, right there, against her sex. ‘And yet still you lie with me.’ His mouth surged up towards hers just as his hand gripped her head, and he overwhelmed her with a long, demanding kiss. His cool tongue subdued hers, and as it did so, he slid an arm around her and rolled her effortlessly on to her back, pressing her down with great force against the mattress.
A million fragmentary thoughts and impressions rushed through her. She did feel fear, and it made a lie of her earlier statement. But she also felt a bigger, wilder excitement than she had ever felt before. The fear and the excitement were mirrored emotions, and both stirred her heart and her body profoundly. She became aware that this man – this being – who was caressing her, could probably kill her or worse at any second, and yet her body still burnt with desire. Her essence was flowing; she was open; she was ready.
Struggling to manoeuvre herself into position without their mouths breaking contact, she moaned in her throat when André wouldn’t allow it. Exerting what Belinda sensed was only a fraction of his strength, he held her motionless beneath him, her womanhood spread by his cool, firm thigh, her throbbing clitoris pressed hard up against it. His hands slid to her buttocks and he began to rock her – at first slowly, then faster and faster and faster – against the unyielding column of muscle and sinew.
‘No! Oh no!’ she protested into his mouth, feeling the wave of her orgasm break and her unfilled vagina contract and pulse. The pleasure was blinding, like a white light imploding in the core of her; yet it was spiked with a vein of dark denial. She had so wanted to have him inside her as she came.
‘Why –’ she began as he lifted away from her, only to have the question suppressed by his mouth. The kiss was quick and peremptory, and she understood that it meant ‘don’t ask’.
‘Caress me!’ he commanded, sliding on to his side next to her. His penis was still stone hard, and he took her hand and folded it around himself. ‘Please … oh please,’ he said, sounding less sure of himself as he moved her fingers with his own. ‘Grant me pleasure, I beg of you,’ he gasped, his hips lifting as their nested hands slid.
‘But –’
‘Please. Do it my way,’ he groaned, gripping her tighter when she tried to release him so she could straddle his body.
Confused, she reseated her hold on him and began her task, creating a rhythm as best she could.
Why is he so reluctant to penetrate me? she wondered as he seemed to swell in her hand, his cold flesh juddering as if he was already about to ejaculate. Does he think he’ll hurt me? Or is it me that might hurt him?
But how could she hurt such magnificence? His penis was thick. Long. Covered in skin that was as fine as oiled velvet. Even its very coolness was a turn-on. Warm was normal; any man could be warm. But cool was exotic and forbidden. She imagined pressing her hot mouth against his glans.
‘Soon,’ he gasped, as he arched and thrust himself through her fingers. ‘But not yet.’
Oh God, thought Belinda. He can even read my mind when he’s almost coming!
‘Yes … oh yes … yes!’ André murmured, his body jerking, his penis pushing, pushing, pushing.
Was he answering her? she wondered. Or just crying out with pleasure? It didn’t matter as she swirled her hand around his shaft.
After a few moments more, André cried out loudly and froze against her, his member a rod of crystal in her fingers. The sound was inarticulate at first, then he let forth a string of tangled words in his own language, and at the same time jerked violently sideways – making her lose her hold on his sex as he came. Belinda got a momentary impression of a cold, silvery slipperiness – a thin, silk-like fluid that almost evaporated as it splashed across her wrist – then he had swivelled away, the tangled sheet around his loins.
‘What are you?’ whispered Belinda into the silence that settled over them afterwards. She remembered asking the question earlier – what seemed like a lifetime ago – and getting no satisfactory answer. Would he still continue to evade her, even now?
André rolled over in bed and sat up. Turning to face her, he tucked his bare legs into a yoga-like position, then let his arms rest loosely on his thighs. His gaze was gentle, resigned and utterly human, and Belinda began to wonder if she had been imagining things. Even his soft, subsiding penis looked exactly like a normal man’s.
Abruptly, he looked up towards the portrait that hung over the bed. Belinda had barely noticed it when they had first entered the room, but now the candlelight seemed to be shining on it more powerfully, and showing every detail of the figure it depicted.
‘That is what I am, or should I say, who I am.’
Belinda stared at the image, acknowledging the likeness but confused by the antiquated clothing.
‘I thought he was your ancestor, like the rest of the pictures,’ she said.
‘All the portraits are of me,’ said André softly, a little smile playing around his lips – a rather sad little smile.
‘I d-don’t suppose you were in fancy dress?’ said Belinda, smiling herself, with trepidation, as an inkling of the truth began to come to her.
‘No, I am afraid not,’ answered André, shrugging. ‘Just in clothes that rather appealed to me at the time … or times.’
‘Then you are a vampire?’ Belinda said, knowing the issue had to be faced sometime, especially now, after what had just happened between them. They hadn’t had sex as such, but it was close enough. Would she slip beneath a hypnotic spell any minute?
‘No, as I told you before, I am not,’ he said, reaching out to take her hand and squeeze it reassuringly. ‘Vampires do exist, believe me, but I am not one of them. I endure a similar plight, but my needs are slightly different. Far less dangerous.’ He paused for a moment, frowning
, and Belinda felt a moment of doubt. Was he lying to her, trying to lull her into a false sense of security? ‘To the best of my knowledge, I am still human,’ he went on, rubbing his thumb across her knuckle in a way that did seem very much the action of a tender, human lover. ‘Changed, but still a man. Still flesh and blood.’ He smiled, more brightly this time, as if the fact that he was still mortal cheered him up.
‘How old are you?’
André appeared to think carefully. ‘I was born in 1760, so that would make me –’ He counted silently ‘– well, over two hundred years old.’ His thumb stilled and his gaze levelled to meet hers.
Belinda swallowed. Her head felt light and she experienced a sudden detachment from reality, as if she had been dreaming and had woken up too quickly. What André had just told her was more or less the secret she had been expecting, but when framed in actual words, it seemed preposterous.
‘Will you live for ever?’
‘I do not think so,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I am extremely long-lived, yes, but as I have aged slightly since my misfortune – perhaps four or five years – I believe that I will grow old and die eventually. But it will not be for several centuries yet.’
Belinda was lost for words, yet from somewhere deep inside she found a question.
‘You said you weren’t a vampire, and that your needs weren’t dangerous –’
André forestalled her. ‘Were you not listening to me when we spoke on the terrace?’ He turned her hand in his grip, then kissed her palm, licking her skin slowly and sensually.
Belinda remembered the terrace. She remembered being befuddled by shame and sensation. He had told her something, but she had desired him too much to be able to think straight. It was a miracle she remembered her own name.
‘My need is very simple,’ he said, drawing her towards him by kissing his way up her arm. ‘And exactly as I described to you.’ Rearranging his limbs, he was suddenly looming over her, his mouth swooping to brush her shoulders, then her breasts. ‘I feed on your senses, Belinda. Your ecstasy, your bliss, your gratification.’ His lips grazed her nipple as his tongue laved it softly. ‘The erotic pleasure that you experience while making love.’
Chapter Nine
Japanese Whispers
HAS SHE UNDERSTOOD me? thought André, arranging his star-strewn cloak around him as he lay down among the books and parchments tumbled across his bed. It was close to dawn, and soon he would be compelled to go to sleep again, but until that happened he could nurture his hopes and dreams.
To his great relief, Belinda Seward had expressed no horror at his unusual longevity and shown very little fear of him, but he did sense that she harboured many questions. Questions, and an instinctive awareness of her own importance in the scheme of things; an importance that transcended simple dalliance.
Not that the love they had made had been insignificant, he realised. Far from it. Abandoning himself to memory, he lay back and hugged his silken cloak around him, thinking of the pleasure he had experienced just hours ago.
Touching and caressing Belinda Seward had been frighteningly like his recurring dreams of Arabelle. Their bodies and faces were so similar, or at least alike in the fact that Belinda was his Arabelle matured to womanhood. If Belle had not been taken from him before she had even achieved her twentieth birthday, she would have looked very much as Belinda looked now. He smiled, wondering if Belle would ever have considered cutting off her lustrous titian hair and sporting the short, elfin crop that Belinda favoured. He would have to ask her. What he was sure of though, was that she would certainly have had the same sensual nature; the same sweet blend of naïveté and daring. A rich amalgam of the pure and the profane.
As his penis began to rise again, stirred both by recent acts and by long-lost dreams, André sat up, squared his shoulders, and reached for a book. It had always seemed odd to him, but he had discovered that he did his best and clearest thinking while he was aroused. Whenever he cast an enchantment, he incited a state of desire for the process – either by stimulating thoughts or by touching himself – and he ascribed much of his magic prowess to the powers of lust.
And he would need every last scrap of that prowess if he were to achieve the difficult goal that lay ahead of him. Opening the grimoire, he turned quickly to the relevant pages, to a ritual that he already knew by heart yet which was so hazardous it had never been given a name.
Would it work? he wondered, wrinkling his nose as a familiar but hated perfume rose up from the age-darkened paper. This grimoire might be the only means by which he could achieve what he wanted for himself and Arabelle, but its origins inspired a deep revulsion. It seemed like only yesterday that he had snatched it up from among the clutter on Isidora’s work table, then fled into the night, taking only it and Arabelle’s crystal vial.
The book of enchantments had not come to Isidora by fair means though, he knew that. She had probably stolen it, most likely from the esoteric collection of one of her previous victims; it was a treasure that had already been antique two hundred years ago. Within its weathered pages was the lore of more than a dozen revered mages – alchemist wizards who had sought eternal life and the secret of creating gold – and even to them the knowledge had been a received wisdom. It contained lore from the Orient, from the Middle East and from Ancient Egypt; where death and rebirth and allegorical erotic ritual had been central to their complex pharaonic cult.
Where would he and Arabelle go if the rite described in the grimoire was successful? he wondered. To the stellar heavens – as the Egyptian kings had believed – or to another world entirely? To nothingness even? There was no way to tell in advance exactly what would happen, but he knew that in some form at least they would be together, freed at last from their state of separation.
There were many hazards though. The ritual might fail and condemn him to live on even longer, his mind affected, his body weakened. He might even lose the spirit of Arabelle, setting her adrift in some dark and unknown void. The greatest danger was that Belinda, as his beloved’s mortal host, might be extinguished too; many ingredients of the elixir were deadly poison when taken under normal circumstances. Belladonna; mercury; azarnet, or arsenic as it was more commonly known. All these were fatal in their unenchanted forms.
Did he have the right to risk Belinda’s life? And if he explained the dangers to her, could she still care for him as the ritual also demanded?
There was no way he could avoid telling her. He already felt a particular fondness for her after just one day’s acquaintance, and besides which, any deception would void the magic. The host had to be aware and completely willing.
Putting aside his qualms for the moment, André considered what other elements he must assemble for his endeavour. Sacred ground was easily found – the priory’s ruined chapel was the perfect site. Candles; incense; bindings? Yes, he had all those in abundance. They had been prepared for decades, in anticipation of a suitable host’s arrival. The one facet he did not have to hand was an attendant sorceress to preside over the final stages of the spell.
This was a most critical requirement indeed. Michiko, his dear friend and comforter, had told him once that she was always awaiting his call, but was he yet sufficiently strong enough to summon her? Their mind-link was tenuous across great distance. And if he could contact her, how quickly would she be able to reach him?
‘Michiko,’ he murmured, closing the grimoire and putting it aside. ‘Michiko-chan … Where are you? I need you … Come to me …’
Almost immediately, a vivid image appeared to him, not of the present but of many decades past. It was Michiko clad in the gorgeous formal kimono she had been wearing when he had first met her, back in Japan, in a period when he had been relatively strong, and travelling extensively to escape detection by Isidora.
In need of his particular kind of ‘sustenance’, he had arranged to be introduced to a famous courtesan, Madame Michiko, a great lady from the elite of her profession. When she had ushered him into
her boudoir and they were sitting cross-legged, facing each other across the tatami mat, it had taken him only a second to discover what she really was; a Miko, or white sorceress, who was blessed – or cursed – with the same long life as he.
‘I perceive your dilemma, my lord,’ she had said to him from behind her fluttering fan, in his native tongue. André had been impressed by her superb command of language, although her mental gift meant she had little need to speak. ‘Please accept my humble assistance in this matter. I will do everything within my power to aid your success.’ And with that she had snapped shut her fan, risen to her feet and shuffled gracefully towards him, then begun, with fastidious fingers, to unfasten his clothes.
‘Michiko,’ he whispered now, remembering her imagination and her gentle, arcane skill. Her poise, above all things, was a wonder to experience, and she created art in the realm of sensual dealings.
Each garment she had removed from him she had meticulously folded and placed on a low cedarwood table. Each accessory she had arranged with reverent flair. His stiff collar had encircled his silver collar studs, and his cufflinks had been positioned one on either side. It had seemed, at first, that she was taking more care of his clothing than she was prepared to lavish on his body, but André soon realised that that was not the case at all.
‘Be at your ease, my lord,’ she had murmured, when at last he stood naked before her. ‘I am here to serve you and to bring relief to your hungering flesh.’
Though he had a hundred years of dealing with women behind him, André felt nervous with this bright exotic creature. That she was a sorceress, possessing the same longevity that he did and most probably far greater powers, put him at a disadvantage in her presence; something he had not experienced since his seduction by Isidora. Michiko’s beauty, too, condemned him as her slave.
Her oval face was painted chalk-white in the traditional geisha style, but the heavy make-up wasn’t in the slightest mask-like; on the contrary, it seemed to enhance the exquisite bone structure that lay beneath it, much in the way that a glaze increased the loveliness of precious porcelain. A vivid, blood-red lip paint outlined a mouth of glorious symmetry, and her long dark eyes were boldly outlined by jet-black kohl. Her hair was hidden by an elaborate traditional wig, adorned with carved ivory combs and paper flowers, but André knew instinctively that it would be long and black and glossy. Similarly, though her body was concealed beneath her ornate many-layered kimono and its huge folded obi, he was certain she would be the very acme of slender shapeliness.
Gothic Blue Page 15
