by Sharon Page
What was she going to say? How could she not feel he was near to her? Hades, he was almost under her feet, buried in the frost-hardened ground.
Five years ago he had been taken to an exotic house on a small Mediterranean island—the home of his vampire sire. He’d been changed into a vampire, and he believed he could never come back to Amelia. But finally, a year ago, he knew he couldn’t face an eternity without her.
He’d traveled the ocean by hiding in the stinking hold of a ship, but he had never reached her. His sire had caught him on the road to his home. He had been given a drug that immobilized him. He had been thrown into a hole in the ground, like a grave, and he’d been trapped there, unable to move, as his sire had shoveled dirt on him, on his legs, his torso, then finally his face. He had been buried in the winter last year—a fortnight before Christmas. The ground had been cold and hard, and even when spring had arrived, the ice didn’t melt from the earth around his prison. It had stayed solid and frozen through summer, through fall, and into another winter. Apparently, his sire had used some kind of magic to keep him trapped.
I do not know what to do. Soft, melodic, Amelia’s voice reached him in his subterranean prison. It wrapped around him, making his heart ache. He was no longer supposed to have a soul, but even without that essential part, he still loved Amelia. He was still capable of love—hopeless love and all the agony that went with it.
He heard the catch in her breath.
I have no mistletoe, said the man she was with. But I stole one of the berries—I’ve got it in my pocket.
You are supposed to take that after a kiss, she replied. But she didn’t sound hesitant anymore.
Dante struggled in his shallow, narrow grave. Damn this. Damn the demon who had changed him, who had dragged him away from Amelia, from the future they should have had. Damn her for forgetting him.
Fury came in a wave—hot, scalding, steaming rage. It coursed through his cold body, and he could feel his flesh growing warmer, inch by inch. Heat radiated from him. He kicked against the top of his small hollow in the earth. The ground compressed where his toe hit it. Some crumbled onto his leg.
What was happening? He didn’t know. He’d tried to claw his way out for more than a year and had not been able to dig through the earth. But the small hole in which he lay was getting hotter. The ice was melting. Water droplets gathered on the hard dirt above his eyes. One dripped free and landed on his lips.
He shoved outward with his arms. The dirt moved, let his fists punch into it. He was going to get out of here. If he had to dig his way out with his teeth, he was finally going to be free.
And go to Amelia.
Amelia grabbed a bunch of holly and went up the step stool, mindful of her hems. The fragrant scent of the shiny leaves surrounded her. Below her, two maids giggled. They held baskets of rosemary and bay, holly and twined branches of laurel.
She was supposed to make the drawing room look festive and lovely. But her mind was not on her work. She would be punished if she did not do a satisfactory job. Probably denied any of the hearty Christmas dinner and drink.
But she had almost had a proposal of marriage. Llewellyn Jones had gazed deep into her eyes and had told her he wanted to make her his wife. He intended to ask her, once she’d had time to recover from what she’d learned about Dante.
What would she say? What should she say? What did her heart beg her to say?
She didn’t know.
Llewellyn had made the truth clear. If Dante was still alive, it was because he was a vampire. He was not really living; he was undead. He had no soul. He was not capable of love. He had turned into a monster. There was no future for her with Dante. If she refused Llewellyn because her heart still yearned for Dante, she would end up alone.
The way Llewellyn had touched her cheek had been so wonderfully gentle. The desire in his eyes had left her breathless. But that one night she’d shared in the cottage with Dante had been filled with magic. She did not think she would ever, ever forget it.
“Ah, the lovely Miss Watson,” a masculine voice boomed beside her. She turned, shocked out of her thoughts, and stared down at one of the earl’s friends, just as the leering gentleman put his hand on her bottom. Viscount St. Maur waggled his brows at her. He must be over forty.
Her stomach lurched. Many of the earl’s friends believed she was like a holly berry, there to be plucked after a preliminary kiss.
“Please, my lord,” she begged, as respectfully as she could. “I must have this greenery hung. The clock ticks toward Christmas Day.”
“After your work,” St. Maur murmured, lust blazing in his bleary blue eyes, “come to my bedchamber. I cannot think of a better gift for Christmas than your lovely tits and sweet little cunny.”
She went scarlet. She knew it by the fire in her cheeks. She must be redder than the berries.
“Leave the lady to her work.” The growl was Llewellyn’s, filled with possessive warning. The slayer lowered his voice. “And if you approach her later, you’ll find yourself hanging from the rafters like a bunch of mistletoe.”
St. Maur stared at Llewellyn’s muscular body, then quickly retreated to get another drink.
Her savior smiled up at her. Amelia’s heart wobbled. A proposal of marriage—for her it was a Christmas miracle. Perhaps she had to stop dreaming of Dante and let herself fall in love again.
Amelia couldn’t sleep.
She sat up on her narrow cot. When she had fallen from the position of governess to menial servant, she had been given a bed in the large, drafty attic room shared by all the female servants. One of the kitchen maids snored terribly.
But it wasn’t the noise keeping her awake. It was thoughts of Dante. She wanted to believe it wasn’t true. But Llewellyn had shown her the journals, books, and notes he had kept of his vampire hunting in the Carpathians. It was evidence, he claimed, of the existence of vampires. He had sketches and recordings of eyewitness accounts. It was his job as a vampire slayer, he had told her, to destroy as many vampires as he could. To protect mortals from the soulless creatures who saw them as nothing but prey and food.
Amelia got out of bed. She planned to go down to the gallery. Sometimes she crept there at night. Dante’s picture hung there. She would stand in front of it, look up at it, and cry quietly in the dark. Sometimes she would daringly touch it, knowing it was foolish to caress a two-dimensional man, especially the image of one who had abandoned her.
But tonight, she wanted to go and look at him and try to force her heart to let him go.
She stole quietly down the servants’ stairs, but at the landing to the second floor, her feet turned against her will and she walked out into the corridor. She could not control her legs. They carried her swiftly down the hall . . . to Dante’s bedroom. The only sounds she made were fierce gasps of anger and panic. Why couldn’t she stop?
She went into Dante’s room. The bed was made with fresh sheets, which were turned back and welcoming. His clothes were still in the wardrobe. His mother had insisted the bedroom be kept ready for Dante, in case he returned. Amelia knew she should leave the room—she wanted to—but her feet took her to Dante’s bed. Lifting the heavy counterpane, she slipped beneath the cool, white sheets.
Stop this. But she couldn’t. Her head hit Dante’s pillow. Then she knew nothing at all except darkness.
Well, almost nothing. At some point, she opened her eyes. Even wrapped in a cocoon of inky black, she knew she wasn’t alone. Her heartbeat was a rush of sound in her ears. “Mr. Jones?” she asked tentatively. She didn’t know why she thought it was Llewellyn—unless he was searching for something. If it was another servant, or the earl or countess, she would be in dire trouble for being in Dante’s bed.
A floorboard creaked. Clothes rustled. She didn’t hear breathing, but she did hear a subtle crunch, like knuckles being cracked.
“It is not Mr. Jones.” Even as the masculine voice rumbled out that name, in tones filled with hurt and autocratic distaste, A
melia knew exactly who it was. Her heart did not beat for seconds.
“Dante?” Now her pulse returned in a dizzying, overwrought surge. Her blood pumped so fast it made her lightheaded. What was he? A vampire or a man? In the pitch-black, she couldn’t see him.
Suddenly, a candle flared. It was on the bedside table, yet the footsteps had come from the foot of the bed. She blinked, as even that small circle of light flooded her eyes.
“Yes, it’s me, angel.”
The bed creaked and finally she could distinguish Dante’s broad-shouldered form at the end of the bed. He sat, his hand clasped around the fluted column of the bed canopy. Unblinking, his face set as motionless as a statue, he stared at her.
“God,” he said suddenly. “You look so pale. So much thinner. That nightgown, that cap on your head is threadbare.”
“I am not a governess anymore,” she said simply. “I am one of the maids. I was a ruined woman. I could not be allowed to be near children anymore. Your family intended to turn me out on the spot, with no wages or references. But in the end, they were compassionate and they let me—”
“Compassionate?” he roared. He was looked at her hands. They were red and chapped, her skin dry and white and scaly. “You were to be my wife. They should have taken care of you.”
“They hated me,” she said. “They blamed me for making you go.”
This wasn’t what she’d imagined saying to Dante after five years. She’d had so many fantasies of his return. When she thought she had been abandoned, she’d envisioned facing him with cold pride. Perhaps slapping his handsome face. When she had hoped he’d been dragged away against his will, she had imagined throwing her arms around him, hugging him, kissing him. But now, wondering if he was a vampire, she was having this odd, cool, mad conversation.
Llewellyn had shown her pictures of vampires in his books. They were ghastly creatures. Men who no longer looked like men, with sunken eyes, and curved fangs, and bloodstained mouths. Dante looked exactly as he had when she had snuggled up to him in the cottage bed. Surely that must mean he wasn’t a vampire. But that brought waves of both relief and pain. If he wasn’t a vampire, it meant he had just deserted her.
Bother this. She was going to be blunt. “What happened to you that night?” she asked fiercely. “Why did you go?”
“I didn’t go anywhere willingly. I was abducted and taken away.”
“You vanished into thin air. The earl sent servants to check all the roads, to investigate at all the inns. They went to the Exeter ports and even to Plymouth, in case you had gone by ship. Or had been taken by ship. Your father searched ceaselessly for you for years. It was only this year that he gave up and stopped looking—”
“He never would have found me,” Dante said. He got up off the bed and moved closer, into the circle of candlelight.
He was so beautiful—his hair was shimmering gold, and it fell around his face in long waves. A fallen angel. It had always been the perfect description for him. Beautiful as an angel, with a sensual, naughty side that had everything to do with devilment and nothing with piety. Then she blinked. His eyes weren’t green. They reflected the candlelight back at her.
“How did you light the candle,” she whispered, “from the end of the bed?”
“I walked from the candle to the bed.”
“That’s impossible. You couldn’t have moved so quickly.”
“I didn’t leave you, Amelia. You have to know that. And I love you even more now than I did then.” Suddenly, he was right beside her, looming over her. But she hadn’t seen him move.
His hand closed on her wrist. He pulled her out of his bed and directly into his arms. She cried out in pain at his tight grip. He let her go, cursing.
“Tell me everything that happened to you,” she demanded, clutching her sore wrist.
“I can’t. On this you will have to trust me. I loved you then; I love you now.”
“I need to know. After five years, I deserve to know.”
“I cannot tell you,” he roared.
He was shouting at her, refusing to give her what she so desperately needed. The truth. He had just hauled her out of his bed. He had almost crushed her wrist. What right did he have to treat her like this? “What is going to happen now? Did you come back to marry me? Or is that all gone now, in the past that you won’t speak of?”
“I can’t marry you.” He bit off the words.
She recoiled. But again, he grabbed her by the arm—the elbow this time—and he drew her to him. She saw his mouth soften. She saw his gaze flick to the bed. “No,” she snapped. “I’m not going to let you touch me.”
“Five years,” he said slowly. “Five years I fought to escape and come to you. Let me tell you this, Amelia Watson. You are not going to marry another man.”
His eyes seemed to glow at her. It was as though a blaze of golden light had leaped from them and seared her heart. She wanted him. Her quim began to throb for him. She felt the wet, hot, weak sensation in her belly and legs. Lust washed over her.
He reached out and touched the base of her throat, where her pulse thundered.
His fingertips pressed to her skin, and a bolt of intense heat exploded there. It shot through her, raced down, down to the private place between her legs, and it exploded again. On a wild cry, she felt her body dissolve. The climax took her, shook her, made her legs crumple beneath her.
And while she was still coming, still moaning in pleasure, Dante scooped her up and carried her to the bed.
3
She was shuddering and moaning with ecstasy as he cradled her in his arms. And when a woman climaxed, she grew wet and smelled deliciously of her juices. Dante’s vampiric senses flooded with Amelia’s lush, erotic scent. His blood rushed down to his groin. His thick, rigid cock strained against his trousers.
But this was more than sex. This was Amelia. Just being so close to her again made his heart thunder with delight, excitement, and nerves. Five years ago, he’d felt all these mixed-up emotions every time he saw her—he’d been as awkward as a boy, as aroused as a man, happier than he’d ever been in his life. Eventually he’d understood what it meant. He had fallen in love.
“You’re mine, Amelia, my love,” he whispered. She buried her face into his chest, gasping for breath. He smiled down at her. Then regretted it when she tipped her face up and saw his curved fangs.
“Oh my heavens—”
“It’s all right, Amelia.” But it wasn’t. Hell, how could it be when he used those fangs to consume blood? They had launched out as soon as he’d smelled her. But he could control his hunger. He had fed already tonight. Before his sire had imprisoned him, he had learned how to take only a small amount of blood, how to ensure he did not hurt his prey. “Mia,” he murmured, and as he whispered the name to her, he knew how perfect it was. As soft and sweet as she was, as exotic and sensual as he knew she could be. It meant mine. “I would never hurt you.”
Her lips thinned into a disapproving line. Never had she looked more like a governess. “I am not only thinking of me. You hurt other—”
“No, my love, I don’t.” He nuzzled her neck beneath her ear, and his heart clenched as she stiffened in fear. “Don’t be afraid.” It might not be playing fair, but he used the power of his voice to soothe her. He had been made by a vampire who possessed a strong ability to project a glamour. Those powers had passed to him. He had the ability to easily seduce prey against its will.
He had brought Mia to his room against her will. But he would not use his power to bed her. What he had to do was break through her fear. “If you have heard stories of vampires, I promise, none of them are true.”
He carried her to his bed and deposited her onto it. How many nights had he lain here, five years ago, dreaming of her? He used to dream of bringing her to his room for the night and doing dozens of erotic things to her.
She rolled over abruptly and tried to crawl away. He grasped hold of her night rail to stop her and forgot his enhanced strength.
He tore the thing right off her. She stopped in shock, gaping down in dismay, while he saw her bared rump, her swinging breasts, and licked his lips.
Maybe she had the powers of allurement too. Whatever it was, in the next moment, he was on his knees behind her, running his tongue over her curvaceous bottom.
She gave a horrified gasp. “Stop! Let me go.”
He caught hold of her slender right ankle and held her fast. The more she tried to escape, the more her voluptuous bottom jiggled against his questing tongue. He laved her curves all over, traced his way up to her tailbone and licked there, before he let his tongue dip into the hot, damp valley between her cheeks.
He couldn’t stop. She could have screamed to the ceiling, and he would not have been able to lift his mouth from her dewy, naked skin. He never would have been able to step back and let her walk away.
“You are mine,” he growled, and he gently nipped the cheek of her derriere as though branding her.
A moan escaped her. But not one of anger or fear. It was a sweet groan of pleasure.
“I did not desert you that night.” He ran his tongue down the cleft of her bouncing bottom. She squeaked with shock and suddenly . . . giggled. She was losing her fear and perhaps her anger.
“Something drew me out of the cottage into the night,” he told her. “My feet literally took me out into the woods against my will. And there, I was attacked by a vampire.”
“That’s how . . . how I came to your room. My feet brought me.” Her words were labored. And when she half turned toward him, crouched on all fours, he saw her cheeks were pink. “The vampire didn’t kill you . . . thank heavens.”
He stopped licking long enough to wryly explain, “He didn’t want a meal; he wanted a companion. And for some reason, he chose me.” Then he gently parted her cheeks and planted a kiss to her puckered anus. Five years as a vampire had opened his world to new and intriguing erotic practices. He couldn’t wait to share them with his Mia.
