“Yes. I need to see Dr. Griffin.” Alba studied the difficult girl. With her shiny blond hair swept off her face and her glowing skin, the nurse was attractive. However, she didn’t appear to be very intelligent. Worse, she seemed to have taken an instant dislike to Alba.
The girl raised an eyebrow. “I’m afraid Dr. Griffin is . . .”
Alba felt a hand on her shoulder. She spun around and looked into the face of an elderly nurse. “Are you Miss Alba Spencer?”
“Yes,” she said, confused.
“I’ll take care of this, Mona.” The older nurse gave a nod to the flustered girl before she wrapped an arm around Alba’s shoulder. The nurse guided her to the back of the Great Hall and down a flight of stairs.
“How do you know my name?” Alba asked.
“Dr. Griffin told me you were coming.”
Alba’s heart thumped. It seemed Dimitri did have visions. My world is becoming stranger by the minute.
The two women treaded through a starkly lit corridor that smelled of carbolic acid and blood. Screams of agony filled the air while crying infants could be heard in the distance. Alba cringed and wondered how Dimitri tolerated such atrocities.
“Dr. Griffin isn’t finished with his shift until four A.M. But you may wait here for him.” The nurse indicated a bench.
Alba glanced at the kindly nurse’s name plate. Emily Donovan. “Thank you, Nurse Donovan.”
“You’re welcome. My, you are a right pretty thing. Just how Dr. Griffin described you,” she said, smiling.
Alba blushed. She took a seat on the bench and laced her fingers together nervously. She spotted Dimitri through a glass partition. He had his sleeves rolled up, revealing muscular forearms and corded veins. And as he sewed up a patient’s sliced arm, blood gushed from the wound in all directions. Alba felt her stomach roil. However, the more she watched Dimitri work, the more her queasiness subsided. In fact, she began to study him with awe. By barking orders and tending to patient after patient, he took complete control of the room. He was a hero here, dedicating himself to the practice of medicine and to helping people—and the thought flushed desire through her.
A few minutes later, he looked over and met her stare. His welcoming expression sent relief rushing through her. She had been an ice queen when they parted last, but all she wanted to do now was tell him he’d been right about the danger she was in. She wished she could race into his arms, bloody sleeves and all, and tell him she was sorry for distrusting him.
He came around the glass partition and gave her a rueful smile. “Alba.”
She stirred under the low timbre of his voice. A strand of black hair hung over his left eye and she resisted the urge to brush it away. Heart racing, she stood and clutched her handbag with both hands. “I . . . I had to see you. Simona—”
“Did she hurt you?”
“She tried to.”
“Wait for me in the Great Hall,” Dimitri said. “I’ll wash up and meet you there shortly.”
She forced a dry lump down her throat. At least he was speaking with her. She stood and retraced her steps back to the Great Hall. The blond nurse was still at the information desk. Catching sight of Alba, the nurse quickly stuffed a copy of the penny dreadfuls into a drawer. Of course, Alba couldn’t blame the girl for reading the scandal sheets. She too got a great deal of fascinating information from them.
Dimitri appeared a few minutes later and took her by the arm. As he began to usher her down the staircase, they heard the young nurse call out, “Good night, Dr. Griffin.”
“Good night, Mona.”
Alba shot him a sideways glance. “She seems rather protective of you.”
“She’s just a child,” was his response.
Since she hadn’t detected any attraction in Dimitri’s voice, Alba forced her jealousy away.
He looked at her with concern and when he squeezed her arm gently, her breath caught.
“You informed Nurse Donovan that I might be coming here tonight,” she said. “How did you know?”
He looked away. “I just did.”
They reached the ground floor and Dimitri pushed his way through a back door. “We can talk in my hansom while I return you to the dormitory.”
“You have a private coach?”
“It’s provided to me by the hospital.” He released Alba’s arm as he swung his greatcoat over his shoulders. “The driver has my schedule committed to memory.”
As they moved to the carriage, which sat in a dark alley behind St. Bart’s, Alba and Dimitri’s breath frosted in the air. Alba swept her skirts off the ground, and with Dimitri’s assistance, she climbed into the hansom. After she settled against its squabs, she heard him give the driver her street address. Then he joined her inside.
“Can we pull around to the front of the hospital? Edith is waiting for me there.”
Dimitri nodded and shouted the instruction to his driver. The carriage jerked to life while he peered at Alba through the shadows. With his topaz eyes flashing and his eyebrow cocked in a curious manner, he looked devastatingly handsome. But more than that, he looked intrigued, as if he wanted to know precisely why she’d sought him out.
Alba said nothing until she sent Edith home. When Dimitri shifted toward her, she tried to reorder her thoughts.
“Now what’s this about Simona?” he asked.
Once she verified that the curtains were drawn for privacy, she delved into her explanation. “She came to see me in the dormitory.”
Dimitri reached for her hand and clenched it firmly.
“She told me that Ileana is planning my demise. Using Ileana’s black magic, she transformed her dress sash into a poisonous snake meant to kill me.”
“My God.” His eyes flashed with anger. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “The girls and Mrs. T. helped me kill it.”
“Damn the fact that I didn’t protect you from her!”
She squeezed his hand.
“I won’t let her come near you again,” he vowed. “Now tell me exactly what she said.”
She recounted the episode, ending with Simona’s claim that she and Dimitri had been lovers.
Dimitri didn’t reply.
“You don’t have to tell me if it’s true because it doesn’t matter.” Alba was lying, but she was in no position to demand the truth. She and Dimitri had never been intimate. What’s more, she was no angel herself. She had joined Simona and Dimitri willingly in the graveyard that night. No one had forced her to desecrate the vampire’s grave—the very sin that had led to their troubles.
As Dimitri shifted his face away, she studied his profile. Half of it was darkened by the shadows, the other half illuminated by lights of the neighboring carriages. She admired the flare of his nose and the way his hair brushed the top of his collar, and when she stole a look at his broad shoulders and able hands—hands that saved people’s lives—her heart skipped a beat. In that moment, it seemed he could do anything. Set fire to water. Even move a mountain with one push of his powerful shoulder. It sent a pulsing heat to her core, suggesting that maybe she was the type of woman who was attracted to trouble.
“Go on,” Dimitri said in a rich voice.
Alba swallowed hard. “What alarmed me almost as much as the cobra was Simona’s assertion that you have a dark secret. She said this secret could present more danger to me than Ileana.”
Dimitri let go of her hand and raked his thick hair. The layers ruffled and fell precisely back into place. “Do you believe that?”
Tears surfaced in Alba’s eyes. She shook her head and stared down at her gloved hands. “I did at first. But now it’s her I don’t trust. Seeing Simona convinced me that you are trying to protect me. It’s obvious that evil girl means to hurt me with every move she makes.”
He nodded gently. “She’s the enemy, not me.” Slipping his arm around her shoulder, he drew her close.
Alba buried her face against his chest. He smelled purely masculine, a mixture of musk-based cologne and his own,
warm chemistry. Comforted by the steady beat of his heart, she tried to hold back her tears. “I’m so scared.”
Unable to stop herself, she began to cry. Dimitri hushed her sobs with low words.
Reaching into her hair, he loosened the pins and stroked the curls that tumbled free. “I told you, Alba, that’s why I’m here. To protect you.”
“I thought you might hate me after I stormed out of your house,” she said.
“I could never hate you. I wanted your anger to cool, so I didn’t contact you for a while, but I’ve been guarding you the entire time. Nothing in the world could ever deter me from you.”
He held her so tightly that she thought she’d been captured by chains. She was a fiercely independent woman who’d sworn she’d never let anyone clasp her so possessively, but strangely, she reveled in it.
Turning her face up, she looked into Dimitri’s golden brown eyes. Heat spiraled to every inch of her body. “That’s just it,” she said. “You know everything about my past, Dimitri. You’re the only one who can protect me.”
“Letting you go was the biggest mistake I ever made.” He looked as if he was about to kiss her, but then he seemed to change his mind.
Alba’s heart began to thump so fast it nearly flew out of her chest. She hadn’t been very responsive to his last kiss, so he might be hesitant now.
Perhaps, she thought with morbidity, he will never try and kiss me again.
In a moment of insanity, she dove forward and pressed her lips to his. She sensed Dimitri’s surprise, but he didn’t draw back. Instead, he groaned against her mouth and clutched her urgently. His lips were velvety soft and warm, but best of all, they were familiar. Clinging to him as if her life depended on it, Alba began to cry all over again—for the kiss transported her back to a time when he was everything she wanted. And the deeper he kissed her back, the more she realized he was all she wanted again.
Dimitri’s breath came in rasps. Pulling her hard against him, he uttered words that assured her she’d done the right thing. As their tongues entangled, electricity sparked within Alba, escalating the fervor she’d restrained ever since Dimitri had sauntered toward her at his birthday party. Her muscles quivered as his hand strayed from her waist to her back. When he caressed the length of it, she grabbed his wrist and moved his hand to her bosom. Dimitri didn’t need additional prompting. He fondled her breast through her coat, and Alba’s body lurched. She matched him kiss for kiss while he arched her back across the carriage bench. Tearing her coat and gloves away, Dimitri traced his tongue along the outline of her mouth. It felt fiery hot, like coal set aflame.
His hand glided along the trail of buttons that barred him from touching the rise of her breasts, and he grunted with impatience. Loud snaps and rips filled the cabin—and Alba saw the buttons of her dress flying through the air.
The noise seemed to excite Dimitri even more. He yanked her dress aside so that he could tug at the material of her chemise. After slipping the thin strap from her shoulder, a breast spilled out. He studied it with dark desire and wet his lips.
“You are so beautiful, Alba,” he whispered. “I’ve thought of nothing but you these eleven years.”
His words couldn’t have provoked more excitement in Alba. Inflamed, she welcomed Dimitri’s hand as it furled erotically around her breast. He laid his body over hers and she could feel his erection against her thigh. Letting out a little cry, she instinctively pressed her leg against it—making his long penis as hard as steel. Dimitri’s mouth skimmed her throat while he stroked the oval of her breast. And when the tip of his tongue dipped into her hollowed spot, she wiggled uncontrollably against the sensation.
Dimitri brushed his head along her chest until his mouth reached her nipple. With his lips and teeth moving simultaneously, he sucked urgently at the nub until it grew to a new height inside his mouth. Moaning, Alba cupped the back of his head as he worked his magic on her hardened point. And as he thumbed her other pink nipple to a hard charge, she drew in a sharp breath.
To Alba, being here with Dimitri was an unearthly pleasure; it was what she’d been missing all these years. Tonight he had been a savior to those poor hospital patients and now, in this carriage, he was her hero—and she lusted for every inch of him.
Dimitri banged on the roof of the hansom.
“Yes, sir?” the driver called out.
“Take us to my house, Drummond.”
A tremor of desire convulsed through Alba. Will we make love tonight? She wanted to. She wanted to feel Dimitri holding her, rocking into her. Regardless of her reputation . . . in spite of her loyalty to Teddy.
While the carriage reversed directions, Dimitri reached beneath the hem of Alba’s dress. She closed her eyes as the pads of his fingers traced her ankle. As difficult as it was, she held her breath while his fingers slid up her thigh. When his touch reached the thatch of hair at the top of her legs, moisture pooled at Alba’s center, hot and wild. She whimpered pleading sounds as he pulled away. Holding her gaze, he gave her a look as if to ask, “Are you ready?” Her answer took the form of a wild gaze. Dimitri pulled her nipple deep into his mouth and sank two fingers into her folds at the same time. It hurt at first but then a cataclysm of pleasure imploded within her. Alba pulsated around his fingers and she let her head drop back against the seat. Pressing her eyes shut, she raised her chin skyward and arched her back as Dimitri continued to plunge his fingers in and out of her. The friction brought her to the edge of madness—and to a tremendous climax.
Her limbs stiffened and she remained still to enjoy the throbbing sensation.
“My God.” She choked the words out. “That feels so good.”
She yanked off her gloves and reached for him now. She wanted to feel him, touch him, and become part of him. Her hand traveled down his trousers until she found his arousal through the heavy material. She grasped it and fondled it, hoping her inexperience wouldn’t matter. Emitting a groan, Dimitri rose up to catch her lips with an openmouthed kiss. He crushed her against his chest, mashing her breasts while she rubbed his shaft.
Just then the hansom rolled to a stop and the driver announced their arrival at Dimitri’s mansion.
Dimitri pushed himself up and stared down at Alba. She was a vision, an angel with flowing black hair fanned across the bench like the exotic plumes of a peacock. The way her steaming, cobalt eyes gleamed at him rocked him to the core—and the sight of her breasts standing at attention made him ache for her even more.
The fact that Alba had initiated a kiss was like a dream come true. Regardless of her independent streak, it proved that she longed for approval and love above all else. The realization filled Dimitri’s blank life with the color he’d been yearning for, so much so that he knew he had to have her at all costs. If he used self-restraint against the temptation of blood, maybe he could make love to her without harming her. Of course, if they made love, he’d have to pay a visit to the British Museum to get his hands on the bracelet of Amenhotep.
He kicked the carriage door open. “I’m taking you inside.” His voice was gruff with desire.
Since he’d ripped Alba’s dress clean open, he pinched it together, then wrapped her coat around her shoulders for coverage. With her head nestled against his shoulder, he burst out of the hansom and hastened inside the house. He didn’t bother to light an oil lamp, but moved to the darkened drawing room where he laid her on the divan.
As he hovered over her, he kissed her deeply. And after he peeled the coat off her shoulders, he knelt before her and parted her frayed dress like a pair of curtains. Alba let out a gasp while he sucked the mounds into his mouth again.
Dimitri urged himself to slow down. He intended to make love to Alba slowly, with an intense focus and an unhurried purpose. She was precious to him, the only woman he’d ever loved. And he had never forgotten the magic of her smile—or the earnestness of her character.
Now she was his to claim completely.
After he flicked his eyes to Alba�
��s face, he continued to feast on her tawny nipples, and his cock became painfully rigid. When he saw that a fire lit her eyes too, his shaft started to pump.
“My God,” she moaned, unable to catch her breath.
Control, Dimitri told himself. He must maintain control and not spill his seed too early. It had been years since he’d made love to a woman, and having Alba writhe beneath his touch was maddening. But he wanted to show her how much he cared for her, how much he treasured her. And once he was inside her, he wanted her to peak first.
Releasing his mouth from her nipple, Dimitri swept his hands inside her torn dress, feeling Alba’s sculpted body. Her skin was warm and soft and supple, just as God intended the perfect woman to be. His shaft remained hard between his legs, but he tried to concentrate on lavishing Alba with kisses. All the emotion he’d felt after their violent separation sprang up inside him, escaping his body by way of those kisses. Alba, as if she sensed just that, opened her mouth to him and received his tongue with anxiousness.
He grasped the back of her neck while her mane tumbled loose and free over her shoulders. She skated her hands along his shirt and fumbled with the buttons. Once she had his shirt open, she trailed down his hairless chest until her caress reached his belt.
A shudder ran through Dimitri. As Alba started to unclasp his trousers, his fangs descended. Heart racing, his body shook as he tried to restrain himself from biting her. She had her hands around his cock, and it was hell trying to resist piercing her creamy neck.
Christ. What was he thinking? If he made love to her, he might kill her. He must stop.
Before he could make another move, there was an insistent knock at the door.
“What the devil?” he said, jerking his head up. Luckily the interruption made his fangs recede.
He and Alba froze for a moment as the knocking continued.
“Could it be Jochen?” Alba pulled her dress closed.
“Maybe he lost his key,” Dimitri said, scowling.
The knocking became more insistent.
“Damn it!” he hissed.
She sat up. “You should see who it is.”
Snow White and the Vampire (The Cursed Princes) Page 11