Master of Ecstasy

by Nina Bangs

  "Why now?" Blythe knew she shouldn't question good fortune, but she had to know.

  A crease formed between those incredible eyes. "Ye drive me mad with your questions, challenge me with your beliefs, care that I am safe, and… ye make me laugh." A slow flush rose to his face.

  Embarrassed? Her big bad vampire was embarrassed? Something cold and hard inside her was melting into soft and mushy. And it had nothing to do with sex. That Darach, with all his power, chose to show her his vulnerability moved her in a way she wasn't ready to examine.

  "Anything else?" She knew a big silly smile was pasted to her face.

  Blythe could almost feel him drawing in a deep breath, and recognized that what he was about to say was difficult for him.

  "I… trust that ye wish the best for me, and I find that I wish to share my feelings." He frowned. " 'Tis a need I have never felt before, and I dinna understand why I feel it now with ye." He offered her a sudden bad-boy grin that completed the melting-and-mushy process. "Mayhap 'tis old age creeping up on me."

  Blythe bit her lip to keep her own emotions from spilling all over him. I trust. Words she'd never expected to hear from him. Words she would treasure always, made all the more precious because she sensed they were not words he had said often during his five hundred years.

  Blythe drew in a deep breath of her own. Okay, time for calm. Time to move into professional mode. Through force of habit, she pressed the E on her charm. She probably wouldn't need to prove anything to Textron once she told him what she knew about him, but her Ecstasy work habits were too firmly ingrained for her to ignore them. She'd probably end up erasing everything.

  Blythe slipped off the bed and hurried to the container that held all her work equipment. She did a mental inventory as she knelt down and pulled out the things she'd need. Mood candles, relaxation mat… "You'll have to take off all your clothes for this." Manipulator gloves, restorative balm… "Oh, and we'll do this in front of the fireplace. Heat strengthens the effect." She rose with everything in her arms, then turned around. As though in slow motion, her things slid from her grasp to the floor.

  "Ye said I must remove my clothing." His crooked smile was the practiced tool of the tempter. "Did I do something wrong?"

  "No." Was that trembling croak really her own voice? "No." Okay, that was better. Stronger, more assertive. "Everything is just fine."

  Fine? Try magnificent, overpowering, stupendous. With the flames leaping and snapping behind him, he was the incarnation of all that was carnal and wicked. Temptation in human form, a beautiful naked demon come to rip her professional persona from her and replace it with a drooling greedy sex fiend.

  She would not let this happen. Wide, powerful shoulders, arms thick with muscle. He was her client, and she would remain calm and professional at all times. Sculpted pecs and flat, ribbed stomach. She'd done this hundreds of times before, and she'd always handled her job with cool precision. Slim hips, powerful thighs roped with muscle, and long, strong-looking legs. This was about her career, and she could never forget that she had to keep her mind on business if she expected to help him. Long, narrow feet… Feet? She thought his feet were sexy? She was one sick puppy.

  Now if she could only close her jaw and remember how to speak, they could get this show on the road. And his whole yummy body was covered with smooth golden skin, probably warm from the fire's glow.

  "Did I ever tell you that you don't look like a vampire?" Time. She needed time to gain control.

  He seemed puzzled. "What should I look like?"

  Blythe shrugged her shoulders. "Pale, anemic. Oh, and you should feel sort of cold and clammy. You know, kind of a fresh-from-the-grave effect." She was babbling.

  Darach frowned. "Some vampires might appear pale because they dinna walk in the sunlight, but my skin has always been as it is. Would ye wish me pale and… clammy?" He didn't seem overly concerned about not measuring up to vampire standards.

  "Nope. You're great the way you are." Shakily she walked over and spread the mat in front of the fire. "Just lie down on your stomach, and I'll—"

  "Ye didna look at one part of my body."

  He stood right behind her, making her nervous. She couldn't seem to spread the mat smoothly. It kept bunching up in different spots each time she tried to lay it down.

  "I didn't look at your face. Do you want me to look at your face?" She turned her head and glared at him. "Yep, it's your face. Can we continue now?" Rotten, lousy mat. She clenched her teeth as she wrestled with it.

  "Ye know what part I speak of." His low, husky voice was suggestive of red velvet and black satin found in dens of sin and sensual pursuits. The male scent of him was redolent of hot, moist places with a hint of spice meant to entrap, enslave.

  Blythe was breathing hard as she stared at the accursed mat. She didn't look up when he took the mat from her and laid it smoothly in front of the fire on the first try.

  "Ye must look at me, Blythe, else ye willna be able to concentrate while ye make me… happy." His voice was the devil's temptation minus the apple.

  He was kidding, right? He really thought that looking at him would help her concentrate? Unfortunately, she understood what he meant. If she couldn't look at him and separate sex from her job, then this whole thing was doomed to failure.

  Okay, she could do this. She turned and looked at his "sexual package." She already knew that it wasn't compact. And at least one part of him was already happy, so she didn't have to exert any energy there.

  "Breathe, lass. I dinna wish ye to faint."

  "I don't have to be reminded to breathe." Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. There, she'd remembered how to do it. "And I never faint." That much, at least, was true. She had no patience with newbies in the business who passed out after scanning the emotions of a client with serious mental problems.

  Darach scooped up the items she'd dropped, put them down beside the mat, and then stretched out on his stomach. He rested his head on his forearm. "Ye must tell me what ye wish me to do."

  I wish you to stop looking so absolutely amazing. He was one smooth, flowing line of yumminess from his strong back over his rounded buttocks to the backs of his thighs and legs.

  "I'm setting seven candles around you. Scientists have created chemicals that when burned emit scents that can directly affect… Well, I won't go into anything technical, but they each will have a specific effect on you." She spaced the candles so that they wouldn't interfere with what she did, then lit each of them.

  " 'Tis amazing," he said in awe of the seven different-colored flames of the candles.

  For the first time since landing in the past, she felt pride in what her time could offer. "Now I'll activate the mat. You'll feel a slight tingling. Relax into it and let it make you feel good."

  Thank heaven, now that she was getting involved in her work, she was falling back into a professional attitude. "I'm going to smooth some cream on you. It'll feel cool and soothing. Enjoy it." Blythe quickly squeezed the cream onto his back, then rubbed it in with slow, firm strokes.

  Her slow, firm strokes were completely professional until she reached his buns. At that point, her firm strokes took on more of a clasp-and-squeeze quality. Fascinated, she watched him clench his cheeks. "Do you know that you have a dimple in each cheek when you clench your buttocks?"

  "Ye have a liking for dimples?" His voice was already soft from the relaxing effects of the candles and the mat.

  "They have a definite aesthetic quality when found on certain body parts." She was feeling pretty mellow herself.

  She blinked to clear her mental processes. No mellowing on the job. "The cream is to prepare you for the manipulator gloves. The gloves work in conjunction with my power to calm and reshape your emotions."

  "Why do ye bother telling me this?" His voice was now only a husky murmur.

  "I just think you'll have less anxiety if you understand what I'm doing." Okay, now came the hard part. "I'm going to scan your emotions, Darach. I want you to
open them to me. Once I see what we have, I'll start the healing process."

  As she spoke, she slipped the gloves on. Calling them gloves was probably misleading. They were nothing more than thin strands of conductive fiber interspersed at regular intervals with tiny nodules that acted on the body's nervous system to complement what she was doing mentally.

  She paused as a thought occurred, "Since you're not really human, could this whole thing hurt you?"

  "It willna kill me."

  Blythe didn't miss the humor in his voice. She firmed her lips. He wasn't taking any of this seriously. Well, he would. She smiled. He most certainly would.

  "I'm connecting to you now." She leaned forward on her knees and placed her gloved hands on his back. "Open your feelings to me, Darach."

  Closing her eyes, Blythe began her scan of his emotions. At first she felt nothing, and she sympathized with how hard it must be for him to open a door that had been closed for so long. But she'd take care of his rusty hinges before the night was done.

  Then suddenly they were there, five hundred years of emotions hitting her with enough force to tumble her mind end over end—wave after wave of elation, grief, passion, rage, remorse, and every other imaginable feeling.

  And as the intensity of his emotions drove her back on her heels, she threw up her hands in a futile effort to ward off some of them.

  Dizzy and disoriented, she still realized that two emotions were missing. Two emotions that said much about Darach MacKenzie. She found no despair. She found no love.

  Her immediate reaction? How could anyone exist without love for five hundred years and not know despair? He's a vampire. Maybe vampires can't love. The thought bothered her.

  "When ye wish for something, ye may not like what ye get." His tone said he knew exactly what she was feeling.

  "I'm fine." Right. Fine. Ecstasy Inc. would probably have to add an addendum to their advertising: Rates for vampires may be higher due to increased risk of uncontrolled hysteria by our Happiness staff.

  She could handle this. Leaning forward again, Blythe began a slow massage of shoulders, back, buttocks, thighs, and legs. The healing process was a partnership between twenty-fourth-century science and her natural power. With each stroke of her fingers she sent her power flowing through him, coating all his negative emotions, feeling them shrivel and lose their power to affect him, and filling the empty spaces they left behind with comfort and a sense of well-being.

  Finally she was finished. While she was working, she had blocked out all other sensations, all other thoughts. As she leaned back and stripped the gloves from her fingers, the world came rushing back.

  She remembered the feel of his supple flesh beneath her fingers, admired the gleaming ripple of muscle as he flexed his shoulders, and drew in her breath with alarm as he slowly turned over.

  "I'm finished. You can dress now." She needed to stand up and put some space between them. Feet, move. Her feet didn't think moving was such a big deal.

  He reached up and cupped her chin in his big hand. "Look at me, Blythe."

  She couldn't avoid it without seeming childish, so she glanced down at his face. His eyes looked lazily content, his mouth soft and relaxed.

  "Ye've helped me know more peace than I've felt since I was a bairn. Ye have a wondrous power." He rubbed the callused pad of his thumb across her bottom lip. "I would repay your gift."

  "No, no, that's okay. I mean, this is my job. But if you really feel strongly about the paying thing, I'll have Textron send you a bill." Mindless-babble attack. Absently she touched her charm to turn off the recorder. She had the evidence she needed, if she decided to use it.

  "I insist." He slid his fingers down the curve of her neck and along the top of her bare shoulder exposed by her nightgown.

  Blythe had never thought so many goose bumps could squeeze onto such a small section of skin. Kind of like the ancient conjecture about how many angels could stand on the head of a pin. She shook her head to clear it. Why was she thinking of angels when temptation incarnate was breathing down her neck?

  "I don't think—"

  He shook his head and offered her his resistance-is-futile smile. "Ye need not think for the rest of the night. Each of us has power. I have felt yours. Now it is time for ye to know mine. I will make ye verra happy."

  "Hey, I appreciate the thought, but I'm already as happy as I can be. Gee, any more happiness would be dangerous to my… happiness." What exactly did that mean? How could he reduce her to seriously stupid by just looking at her?

  Propping himself up on one elbow, he drew her head down to him. "Never as happy as I can make ye." He touched her earlobe with the tip of his tongue before whispering in her ear. "I will try verra hard not to bite ye."

  Uh-oh.

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  « ^ »

  Blythe watched, mesmerized, as he stood up, helped her to her feet, and then carefully blew out each of her candles. The small plumes rising from them symbolized an ending to the scientific and enlightened method of achieving happiness and the beginning of Darach MacKenzie's way.

  And she had no doubt that after five hundred years, his dark, sensual, and exciting path to happiness would be totally satisfying, if fleeting. Because she still firmly believed that the path to lasting happiness didn't pass through the quicksand of sexual indulgence. But hey, she was just about ready to test the sensual waters and hope she missed the quicksand spot.

  He said nothing as he clasped her hand and led her to his bed. She let herself be led, but that didn't mean she'd completely committed herself. There was still inner turmoil to quell, battles of conscience to be won.

  When Darach reached his bed, he released her hand, then tossed the covers aside and lay down. She stood staring at him, the temptation to fling herself atop his bared body almost silencing her noisy inner conflict.

  "Lie with me, Blythe. I have allowed ye to use your powers to bring me peace, so your obligation to Ecstasy is finished. Now ye may freely come to my bed so that I may show ye that there are joys beyond mere peace." He touched her with his gaze—warm, convincing.

  Of course, she'd already experienced a few of his joys beyond peace. "Is that why you let me touch your emotions, Darach? Did you concede the battle so that you could win the war?" Blythe didn't really believe it, but she needed the air completely cleared before she made her decision.

  His gaze never wavered. "Ye dinna believe this." He patted the bed beside him. "Sit and tell me what fashes ye."

  She eyed the bed, saw no obvious trap, and sat down. "Is the bed magic?"

  Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. "No. Why would I need a magic bed?"

  Why indeed? He was the magic, and he needed no bed to help him. "Look, I haven't been completely up front with you. Sure, I didn't want any sexual complications to compromise my work, but that wasn't the whole story." This would be hard, but she felt she owed him some explanation for her attitude. After all, he'd bared his body and his emotions to her.

  "I never thought it was." His gaze seemed to reach into her heart and had the same effect as an unexpected visitor when her house was a mess. No way would she let him in.

  "One thing you have to know about me is that back home I was always late for everything. I mean, I was never on time. It drove my family crazy, especially my brother, Mandor. He was always on time." Blythe paused to gain strength. The telling would get harder now.

  " 'Twould be easier if ye would invite me into your mind so ye wouldna have to bear the pain of speaking about it out loud." He didn't suggest that she forget about it, or advise her to save it for another time if it upset her.

  "No, I'll be okay." She appreciated that he understood her need to tell her story. "Ecstasy decided to have one of their regional conventions on some backwater planet because it would be cheaper. They insisted that my parents and at least my brother or I attend."

  "Backwater planet?" The line between his eyes said he was struggling with the planet
-other-than-earth concept.

  Blythe sighed. So much to explain, so little time. "My brother wasn't going with us. He had no particular plans; he just didn't feel like going."

  She swallowed hard. Would her past ever pack less of an emotional gut punch? "This was during the time that I was exploring sensual solutions with my client. I wanted to spend time with him, so I begged Mandor to take my place. He agreed."

  Blythe crossed her arms over her chest and began to rock back and forth. When she was little, this sometimes helped ease the pain of a stomachache. It did squat for a heartache. "They'd just entered the convention hall when an antiquated heating system exploded. They all died."

  Gently he slid his fingers over her cheek. "I sorrow for ye. 'Tis never easy to lose those close to us, and guilt doesna reason. Still, ye canna blame yourself for your brother's death." His voice was low and soothing.

  But even the almost hypnotic comfort of his voice couldn't put a dent in her self-loathing. "I blame myself for all their deaths. I told you that I was always late. If I'd gone with my parents, they wouldn't have even been in the convention hall. They would've been sitting in my hotel room waiting for me while I put on my makeup."

  She paused, expecting him to tell her once more that she wasn't really to blame. Instead, he again clasped her hand. "Even after five hundred years, I think of things I might have changed if I had but known what would happen. I shouldna have left Aesa alone while she was with child. I shouldna have spoken in anger to Thrain. Mayhap then the child would have lived, and I would still know Thrain's friendship. Were these things my fault, Blythe?"

  Blythe shook her head as she watched him trace comforting circles on the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb. "Up here, I understand the logic of what you're saying." She tapped her forehead. "But not here." She placed her hand over her heart. "That's why I feel that I have to make it up to them somehow. And I can only do that through Ecstasy. The job was everything to them, and they had such high hopes for my future in the company. I have to make it to the top for them, and I can only do that by not making the same sexual mistake again."