Silken Rapture: Princes of the Underground, Book 2 (3 page)

But
he
could touch her.

“Spread the word among the Literati that it is forbidden to touch her.”

Aubrey nodded.

“Find out who she is,” Blaise told Michael. “The more information we have, the better. Morshiel won’t rest until he has her once again.” Michael nodded, seeming relieved that Blaise was willing to move past his earlier impulsiveness. Blaise glanced at Aubrey. “Send out a scouting party to see if they can catch Morshiel’s scent. Bring the crystal to Sanctuary. Protect it, Aubrey,” he added under his breath. “It provides more vitessence than blood. It won’t take Morshiel long to recover from his wound and decide to reclaim it.”

“And the woman?” Aubrey asked.

“She has my protection.”

Aubrey nodded. Michael gave the woman one last glance of incredulous longing before he stared once again at his reddened palm.

“Fool,” Blaise muttered under his breath.

He walked down the platform toward the dark tunnel in the distance, refusing to look into his captive’s face. If he did, he’d turn into as much a fool as Michael.

If he did, he might never look away.

Chapter Two

Margaret Turrow, his human housekeeper, turned when he entered the bedroom.

“Keep your voice down,” she warned with a glare.

Blaise curled the side of his upper lip in a menacing gesture. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a habit. He still snarled at Margaret, even after she’d been in his service twenty-eight years. True, a quarter of a century was nothing to him, but sometimes it seemed he’d known Margaret as long as he’d known Aubrey. The woman deserved his respect, if only for the fact that she’d put up with him for all that time. The Literati had good reason to be wary of Blaise’s dark moods, but Margaret knew for a fact she could do nearly whatever she pleased in Sanctuary and Blaise would only bark at her for her impertinence before he let her do whatever she wanted.

Most of the time, anyway.

He walked around the four-poster bed where Margaret sat. He hadn’t seen the woman when he entered because the posts were draped in a white diaphanous fabric, blocking his vision. She lay on the amber silk sheets completely nude with the exception of the two elbow-length black gloves.

He came to a halt as if he’d just realized he was about to walk off a cliff.

“She still hasn’t awakened,” Margaret said as she raised a sponge from a basin of water and squeezed. The sound of the trickling liquid barely penetrated his consciousness. He followed the glistening trail of dampness as it swept along the curve of a hip to a narrow waist, and then along the woman’s ribs. The sponge whisked against the smooth skin of a small, perfectly shaped breast before Margaret withdrew it and dipped it again in her bowl of water. The contrast between pale skin and the dark hair between her thighs was electrifying. The pink, relaxed nipples also stood out markedly atop creamy flesh.

No wonder Morshiel wanted her so much. It was like staring at life distilled. For a full five seconds Blaise sensed her blood zooming through her veins, thousands upon thousands of rich rivers nourishing sweet flesh. Her heartbeat throbbed in the center of his brain, calling him, pulling him.

For a stretched moment, he couldn’t breathe.

With extreme effort, he jerked his gaze off her. He blinked in disbelief when he realized his incisors were extended. Sweat had gathered on his upper lip.

And he was harder than stone. Thankfully, Margaret was still turned away.

“Why the gloves?” he asked.

Margaret threw an admonishing glance over her shoulder, still washing the girl’s belly. Apparently he’d spoken too loudly for a sickbed.

“She becomes restless when I remove them,” Margaret said. “Worse than restless—agitated—although she still doesn’t awaken. Do you have any idea why that might be?”

Blaise kept his gaze on Margaret. He didn’t look at the woman again for the entire meeting.

“No idea,” he said.

Margaret’s blue eyes sharpened on him. “She is powerful, though. Isn’t she?”

He quirked up one brow. “When did you start to sense vitessence?” he asked wryly, referring to the life force that surrounded all living beings. The woman who lay naked on the bed had the most powerful vitessence he’d ever seen in his five hundred and fifty plus years on the planet. Her energy was even more powerful than Elysse’s had been.

He could see vitessence with his physical eyes, although a human like Margaret could not. This woman’s was a brilliant gold shot through with millions of minute specks of zipping, flickering white light. He saw it now, from the corner of his vision. It beckoned him, taunted him. Like Morshiel, he was a vitessence-parasite. He sustained his physical body by drinking blood or sex juices—bodily fluids infused with the energy of the spirit. As one of the soulless, Blaise possessed no vitessence, but his craving for it was every bit as powerful as his degenerate clone’s.

“I don’t have to see her aura to sense she’s special,” Margaret said dismissively. “Is that why you brought her to Sanctuary?”

“I brought her here because Morshiel wants her. Perhaps you’ve noticed it’s in my nature to deny Morshiel anything he wants.”

Margaret sniffed. “Aubrey says she’ll come to if we just give it time. For now, it’s best for her to rest. What do you plan to do with her?”

“
Do
with her?” Blaise asked roughly. “I don’t plan to
do
anything with her.”

“She’ll be relieved to hear that, I’ll wager,” Margaret said under her breath.

“One does not do anything to a prisoner, save keep them imprisoned.”

Margaret glanced around sharply. “
Prisoner
?”

“I said it, didn’t I?” he barked.

Margaret looked for a moment as if she might argue. This time, his snarl wasn’t meant for show. Margaret’s response was to frown a threat right back at him.

“I’ll not keep her behind bars. She’ll have some freedom. I’ll eventually have to take her to Delraven, I suppose,” he growled, referring to his country estate in Scotland. A woman such as she will wreak havoc among the Literati. For now, just see to it that she stays far away from me.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” Margaret said as she drew the silk sheet over the woman’s body. “No woman in her right mind would seek you out voluntarily with that savage manner of yours…unless she had an invitation to your bed.”

A smile tickled at his mouth, but he did not succumb to the fancy. “You work at Sanctuary of your own free will and you have never shared my bed. What does that say about you?”

“Most would say I’m a great fool, but I say I’m the greatest of saints,” Margaret muttered under her breath.

Her words made him recall that he must contact his brother, Saint Sevliss. He’d video-conferenced with Saint just this morning, and it was because of that communication that Blaise had known something was amiss at the unused British Museum tunnel. How had Saint known about the powerful crystal appearing in London when he resided in Chicago?

Something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t just him who thought so. The other Sevliss princes shared his confusion and suspicion. Saint had been strange and elusive in his communications for several weeks now—ever since he’d somehow accomplished the impossible and vanquished his clone, Teslar.

He became distracted from his thoughts by the vision of Margaret standing and briskly tucking the blanket around the slender woman. She made a shooing motion, as if he were an annoying flea instead of a six-foot-five-inch, nearly two-hundred-pound male.

“You hang about a great deal for someone who says he wants to be left alone. Be gone with you. Let her rest in peace. She’ll have enough to deal with upon awakening.”

Isabel shifted her limbs as she arose from her dreams and found herself swimming in silk. Her lips curved in pleasure. As the daughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner, she had only recently tasted luxury. And this was a
delicious
luxury—something even her newly born fame hadn’t afforded her as of yet. Funny, she recalled seeing her room at the Ritz before she attended the demonstration at King’s College, but she didn’t recall such decadent sheets on the bed.

Her eyelids popped open.

For a full ten seconds, she lay there immobile, only her eyes moving around in a wary reconnaissance.

She was dreaming.

She was definitely dreaming.

She lay in the middle of a chamber that was so exquisite, so decadently grand, she might have awakened in one of the Medici’s Renaissance palazzos. She couldn’t tell if it was night or day, the chocolate-brown velvet draperies and amber silk panels were so luxurious and thick. Her gaze skimmed across the hand-painted frescoes on the domed ceiling—the artistry unlike anything she’d ever seen. The eye could get lost in the elaborate details of the plaster moldings.

It
would
be like awakening in a Medici Renaissance palazzo if it weren’t for the modern conveniences, she thought to herself when she saw the enormous carved wood entertainment center and the fully stocked, granite-topped wet bar.

I can just imagine what a Snickers would put me back in this hotel.

The thought steadied her, made it possible for her to whisk back the amber silk sheets and sit up. She refused to acknowledge the other thought that slunk like a black shadow in the background.

This is no hotel you ever checked into.

It was difficult to banish that frightening thought when she realized she was naked, save for her black velvet gloves. She’d bought the gloves, along with a sophisticated evening dress, for the reception at King’s College. At least whoever had removed her clothes had the common sense to leave her the protection of her gloves.

The car wreck a year and a half ago had marked a turning point in her life in more ways than one. She’d been in a coma for six months before she awakened, but when she did, everything was different. Not only could she sense other people’s auras and sometimes read minds—abilities she’d possessed for as long as she had memory—she’d somehow acquired a terrifying new power.

With just a touch of her hands and fingertips, Isabel would learn an object’s history through flashes of the identity and feelings of those who had handled the item. Unfortunately, what often came through with the most clarity were violent and traumatic events associated with the object.

Touching other people could be worse. Far worse. She had never known the amount of pain, loneliness, lust, hatred, fury and sadness a human being could possibly harbor beneath skin and bone until she’d awakened from that coma. The knowledge had tipped Isabel’s known, familiar world off its axis.

Lester Dee, a professor from New York University, had sought her out a year after she’d left the hospital. He’d read an article about her abilities as a psychometrist and tried to locate her for six months. When he found her, she’d been living in a halfway house, malnourished, depressed and straddling the threshold between life and death.

Who wanted to live when touching objects, and especially fellow human beings, could be pure agony? She was destined to die alone.

Lester had lifted her out of the abyss, helped her find ways to cope with her new ability even as he studied it and shared his findings with her. Lester had been the reason she was making a tour of universities in the United Kingdom. His research articles on her abilities had gained great interest as well as controversy in the academic community. She’d always wanted to see England, so she’d been more than happy to accompany Lester so that he could validate his claims.

One thing Isabel had learned when it came to anything paranormal—scholars
never
believed without seeing proof firsthand, and they rarely believed even then.

Was Lester
in this grand establishment as well?

She squinted, trying to locate memories in her brain. It was a little like grasping for a feather in an unfamiliar, pitch-black room. Fear rose in her, causing a bitter taste at the back of her throat. She stood, pausing a moment while she steadied herself with a hand on the mattress. It wasn’t a normal dizziness. Strangely, she felt overly energized, not drained, as if she’d just drunk a potent stimulant.

The room spun and then resolved into magnificent grandeur once again. She spied a carved door and staggered toward it. Inside, she discovered a closet that was larger than her apartment bedroom. The closet led to a bathroom, she observed, peering through the door. Only two garments hung on the empty clothes rack in the closet—her purple dress and a soft microfiber robe. She grabbed her dress and hurriedly donned it, eager for even that flimsy bit of armor when she felt so vulnerable. Her heart began to pound uncomfortably in her chest. Now that her dazed disorientation was lifting, panic was quickly rushing in to take its place.

Had Lester
brought her here? The memory of her mentor’s tatty tweed blazers and generous heart, yet emaciated pocketbook, didn’t make the possibility seem likely.

She rushed back into the bedroom. The wet-bar was well-stocked with premium liquor and wine. She flipped open drawer after draw and finally found what she wanted.

The small, sharp knife in her hand didn’t make her feel any safer, but it steadied her.

She opened the bedroom door and stepped warily onto an open landing. Her feet struck cold, hard marble. She rushed down the remainder of the hallway into a vast foyer with a domed ceiling. The ornate balustrade she passed was so white it might have been carved from snow crystals. She didn’t draw a breath as she flew down the grand staircase, her bare feet making her descent eerily silent.

She reached the bottom and found herself standing in a circular gallery with multiple doorways leading off it and magnificent tapestries and paintings adorning the walls.

She purposely pricked one of her fingertips with the small knife. Pain flashed through her, sharp but quickly gone. No. She wasn’t dreaming.

Isabel had grown up in Lettering, Pennsylvania—a gray, meager, mean little town. She’d never seen colors, textures and riches as she did in that moment, let alone dreamed them. Yes, she’d seen true wonders since arriving in England six weeks ago, and her visions while touching objects often revealed wondrous places. But those were other people’s memories, other people’s lives…