Bitten by Desire (4 page)

“
No!
” Her voice was so high-pitched it would have been a scream, were she able to take a breath. She would not believe it.
She could not believe it.
She got to her feet and threw herself at him, her arms around his neck, her body pressed into his, sobbing and begging, feverishly pleading. “No, no, no. Not us. Not this. Not when it feels like this.”

He fought to restrain her, but even as he tried to imprison her arms, he entwined his own around her delightfully soft body. The sash of her wrapper came undone. Through her nightgown her breasts rose and fell as she struggled, her skin warming his even through the barrier of his clothes. The longing for skin on skin, for flesh on flesh was extreme. He fought her, but he could not fight himself. His needs were too strong, her presence here, in his private sanctum too powerful. The scent of her was like the scent of no other. Not even Lucilla had been able to exert such power over him. No one in all the lives he had led had ever had the effect of Imogen.

Irresistible. The word countless numbers of women had applied to him. Now he knew what it meant. His lips found hers. His arms drew her close. He heard her sigh in submission. He sensed her heated confusion but though he forced himself to look for it there was no resistance; nothing save a desire to submit and a need as strong as his. It was like looking in a mirror and for the first time seeing his reflection. Her mind pleaded with him. Fatally pleaded with him.

His kisses were hungry, but so too were hers. Claiming kisses, and claiming hands, touching and tugging. His coat was discarded, then his waistcoat. His neckcloth, her wrapper. Imogen kissed and was kissed and thought of nothing save the next kiss and the next touch and this driving need, beyond her control, to be possessed by him, to know him and to prove him wrong. He was her other half. If he was her other half he could not harm her, for to do so was to harm himself. So she reasoned as she kissed, her hands seeking out his skin at the neck of his shirt, tugging his shirt free from his breeches to touch his back, revelling in the way her touch turned cool into heat, revelling in the extremity of feeling that her stretched-sensitive fingertips roused.

Vaelen pulled his shirt over his head, revealing a smoothly muscled torso, hollowed stomach, tapering waist. Like a statue, only she could warm him. Pygmalion, only in reverse, Imogen thought hazily as she drank in her fill of him, rubbing her cheek on his chest, stroking her fingers down his sinewy arms, reaching round to trace his spine. “Love me, Vaelen,” she whispered, pressing little kisses onto the line of his ribcage. “Love me.”

He tugged the neckline of her nightgown over her shoulders to reveal her breasts, drew in his breath at their lush beauty, moulding them in his hands, his thumbs grazing the nipples so that they hardened and peaked, pleasure scattering out from his touch to heat her belly, to heat her sex. Her body was blooming. Vaelen's mouth replaced his hands, his tongue caressing first one nipple then the next.

He pulled down her nightgown so that she stood naked in the light of the fire. Flames licked inside her. Heat coated her. Where she touched him, she could almost see the trails of warmth she laid on his skin. Vaelen's hands moulded her bottom now, kneading the flesh, his breath coming harsh and urgent, his mouth trailing from her breasts to her throat, her throat to her breasts, extracting such pleasure that she barely noticed the change from licking and sucking to nipping and softly grating.

She was mindless with desire, urgent with the need to be filled, bent back in his arms like a bow as he tended to her, throat and neck and breasts, breasts and throat and neck. He pulled her closer. The hard length of him pressed into her through his pantaloons. She stroked the contours of his buttocks and moaned with pleasure.

Vaelen was in danger of losing control. He had never been so desperate to possess. She was intoxicating. He discarded what was left of his clothing, closing his mind to all but the need to give her pleasure, and in doing so, to take his own. As he stood before her, naked, he watched with exultation her eyes widening, the little flicker of her pink tongue on her swollen bottom lip. He had grown so used to seeing his body as a tool, knew himself to be well-formed, his manhood to be well-endowed, but had cared not, save that it served his purposes. Now he was glad of it.

Taking her hand, he laid it on his shaft. The stab of pleasure that her tentative touch gave him was almost his undoing. He circled her fingers around him, showing her how to touch him, at the same time slipping his fingers into her moist folds. This time pleasure was like a jolt, his muscles contracting in response to hers, in unison with hers. He slid his fingers deeper inside her, flicking his thumb over the swollen nub of her sex and felt the first tremors of her climax building. He kissed her. Her nipples grazed his chest. He slid his fingers, slick with the evidence of her arousal, up and over, around and over, revelling in the clenching, clutching of her muscles, until he knew she was ready.

He kissed her again, and it was different. She felt it, in the way his lips ravaged, sensed his abrupt submission to hunger in the way his body stiffened, his erection swelled in her hand. His fingers ceased coaxing and commanded her surrender, and even as she did, tumbling so suddenly into a climax that she had nothing left to be frightened with, Vaelen's face changed. He leaned into her neck as if to bite her, then recoiled in horror.

She thought it was over then, when he pushed her from him, but it was not. He bent her over the chair, his arms around her waist, and plunged into her, hard into her, so that her climax took on a deeper and darker force, his shaft claiming her, branding her with such force that she had to steady herself by holding onto the arms of the chair. She thought he could go no higher, that she could fall no further, that it must surely be over for both of them. Except that every time he withdrew, his next thrust claimed more of her and more, until she felt the hot rush of him coming into her. She was lost, spent and doomed. She thought she would die of the pleasure and wished that she would.

 

His withdrawal was not gentle. One moment there was a warm presence, the next an icy absence. Shaking, Imogen righted herself, and already Vaelen had pulled on his shirt and pantaloons. Unthinking, she put a hand to her neck, feeling the tenderness there, where he had bit her. She was bruised, but he had not broken the skin. She risked a glance, and flinched at his harsh countenance, the set of his mouth.

“Don't worry, I did not do it, but I need not tell you it was a close-run thing. You see, I cannot stop myself.”

Imogen pulled her nightgown over her head. She picked her wrapper up from the floor and fumbled with the sash. Her fingers didn't seem to be working properly. She was cold. “But you did stop yourself, Vaelen,” she whispered.

“This time.”

She gave up trying to tie her sash, and slumped down on a chaise-longue, avoiding the chair. “There's something I need to know.”

He shook his head, leaning against the fireplace, seemingly oblivious of the heat the embers gave out, crossing his arms over his chest. His hair was rumpled. His mouth was swollen with their kisses. On his cheek there was a tiny scratch which had not bled. He took her breath away. Longing gusted through her.

“You want to know about the others,” he said bleakly. “There have been many across the years. It is how I live, how I survive. But never have I taken from an unwilling woman, and never have I taken more than required to satisfy my needs. I have never killed. You must know that. Save once.”

Imogen caught her breath. “Once?”

“Long ago. Her name was Lucilla. There is a legend among my kind that the lifeblood of a true love has a special magic, the power to grant mortality to us while guaranteeing that no harm befalls the giver. But it only works if the love is pure and true. She said she loved me. I thought I loved her too. I was young then, and relatively innocent, and I was wrong. She died. The legend is just that, a myth. I pledged then that she would be the only one. I have kept my pledge and lived a solitary life ever since.”

“A solitary life is what you are condemning me to,” Imogen said, clasping her hands tightly together in her lap and digging her toes into the carpet in an effort to control the violent trembling which shook her.

“At least you will be alive, Imogen.”

“I won't. I didn't have a life before I met you. How can I live after you? I love you.” The words were wrenched from her. She made no attempt to hide the tears which followed them, but nor did she throw herself at him as she wanted to do. Only, she could not go without him knowing.

Vaelen gripped the marble lintel of the fireplace. “Imogen, don't make this any harder.”

She blinked at him, her eyes were drowned in tears which sparkled on her lashes and glittered on her cheeks, but the love she had declared glowed from her like a live thing. The heat of it crept towards him, warming his skin as the embers of the fire failed to do.

“I love you,” she said defiantly. “I know you love me, else you would not have such a care for me. Just say it. Please, Vaelen, just once.”

Her absence he would cope with as a labour of love. Her doubting him, he could not. “Of course I love you. You know I love you. Never forget that.”

Now she did get to her feet, rushing towards him. Vaelen wrapped his arms tightly around her, holding her as if he would meld her into his skin. Imogen closed her eyes. He felt like home. They were meant to be. She was right after all. He was hers.

A soft breeze ruffled her hair. She was flying with the ecstasy of his embrace. Then her stomach plummeted and she opened her eyes. Her feet were cold. It was dark. She was back in the garden. Alone. Save for Allegra, sitting on the plinth of the statue at Diana's feet and blinking at her.

Imogen was withering, like a plant deprived of water, a flower deprived of sun. Everyone noticed. “It is as if the light has gone out in you,” her mama-in-law said, and talked of taking her to Bath to partake of the waters as a cure. But Vaelen was her light and the lack of him was the illness from which she suffered. No spa waters nor powders nor tonics could effect a cure.

He was not gone yet, but her sense of him was fading. She loved him too much not to try to do as he bid her, though it cost her dearly. When he crept into her mind, she painfully closed the door on him. She lay wide-eyed, lids burning, awake until dawn, only then allowing herself a few restless hours of sleep, knowing that in the broadest hours of daylight he was safe, for he could not hear her. Vaelen was her light, and she was wilfully extinguishing it. Before long, she too would become a creature of the twilight.

It came to her as she sat gazing out on the waning moon. True love. He said it was a myth, but what if it wasn't? What if Lucilla died because she had not loved him enough? Or perhaps he had not loved Lucilla as much as he thought he had. So simple, she wondered Vaelen had not thought it before. He loved
her
as she loved him, of this Imogen had absolutely no doubt. They were meant to be. It would work, it
had
to work.

Without giving herself time to think, she closed her eyes and called to him fervently, desperately, pouring her love for him into her summons. And he came. Tortured, misted in grey, with his light dimmed like hers, he came to her chamber.

“Imogen.” His voice was raw with defeat.

“Vaelen.” Seeing his beloved face again made her heart ache. She was afraid, suddenly, of how much she was asking of him. “Vaelen, I have been thinking. The legend…”

“My love, I've told you it is just that, a myth.”

She pressed her hands together to stop them from shaking. “The lifeblood of a true love. What if it is not a myth? I know how much it is to ask of you. Perhaps it is too much to ask you to give up, selfish of me to even think of it, but…”

“Selfish! How can you think so? Immortality is a curse when there is no one to share it with.” Vaelen took her hand, his cool lips pressing a kiss to her palm before he rubbed it to his cheek in a tender gesture that brought a lump to Imogen's throat. “I would give my immortality up in an instant for a year, a week, a day with you as a mortal. But I can't. It won't work, and I won't risk it, your life is more precious than my happiness. You would die, Imogen. And if you died, my eternity would be purgatory.”

Imogen wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. “She didn't love you enough. Lucilla, she didn't love you enough. Don't you see, she didn't love you as I do? No one could, or ever will, no matter how many more lives you have.” She plucked at his sleeve. “Vaelen, Lucilla was not your true love, or maybe you were not hers. Did you feel for her what you feel for me? Was it the same?”

“In the way as a shadow is the same as its owner. No, it wasn't the same. What I feel for you I have never felt for anyone.”

Imogen's heart jumped, plumping with hope. “So, you see, it could work.” Excitement tinged her voice. Pleading sparked in her eyes. She gripped his sleeve in supplication.

But Vaelen flinched from her beguiling—too beguiling—supplication, the lines of his face harsh with pain. “I can't. Imogen, I can't risk you. That you love me enough to offer will be my solace.” He looked down at her, his eyes glowing, a vibrant green she had not seen before. He stroked her brow, planted a kiss there. “I could not risk harming a hair on your head.”

Her tears overflowed, tracking a silvery path down her cheeks but she ignored them. “My life means nothing to me without you.” She gripped his hand fiercely. “Please, Vaelen, I love you. I love you more than life itself. Without you I am a shadow too, living but barely alive. The only difference between us is that there is an end to my sentence.”

“You would do this for me, even though you know who I am and how I have lived?”

“I would do it for us. You will no longer be a slave to that way of living if you are mortal. I love you as I know you can be, as the man you will be, for the honourable man you are, who has fought his very nature to survive on his own terms. I love you, Vaelen. Can't you see that? I love you. My heart and my soul are yours.”

“Imogen, my own Imogen, you can't love me half as much as I love you. I wish—if only—I wish… But I can't.” He kissed her then, fluttering kisses on her brow, her lids, her cheeks, the soft line of her jaw, licking away the salt of her tears, with every kiss saying it over and over like a spell.
I love you, I love you, I love you.

He loved her. He had loved her from the moment he cast his eyes upon her. He could see that clearly now, now that he allowed himself to look for the signs. And she loved him, of that he was certain. He could see his own feelings reflected in her eyes, echoing in her touch. When he thought of the sacrifice she offered him, he felt as if his heart were being squeezed in a vice. The sweet temptation of the legend was overpowering. What if it was true after all? There could be no doubt that his love for Lucilla was but a pale shadow of what he felt for Imogen. What if it worked?

“Imogen. In all my lifetimes there has never been a woman like you. I love you.” He kissed her delectable lips.

She smiled. “Never? Do you really mean that?”

“You know I do.”

Her smile curved further. “Then I am the one?”

The one. She was the one. Could it really be that simple? Vaelen swallowed hard. Every part of his being told him it was. Certainty flooded him like light, but still he hesitated. So much to risk. So much more to lose?

“Vaelen?”

If he did not take the risk, they would both regret it. He forever, she for a more human lifetime, but regret it they would. “Imogen. The one. My one. The only one. Are you sure?”

“Kiss me, Vaelen, I have never been more sure.”

“I love you,” he said huskily, and did as she bid him.

It was not like before. Not at all like before. His kisses were tender, shaping the words of love she knew he was thinking, for he opened his mind to her as well as his heart. She found she could do the same, telling him she loved him over and over as she responded to the gentle urging of his mouth and his hands, shaken by the depth of feeling he was rousing in her so that she trembled all over, heating him until they were both burning.

He laid her back on the bed and quickly discarded his clothing. His body gleamed, the broad contours of his chest, the dip of his stomach, his muscled thighs, his manhood standing proud and ready. She looked at him, unashamedly relishing the very masculine lines of him, hard and unyielding in contrast to her own soft and pliant body. He leaned over her and untied the strings of her nightgown, easing it down so that she too was naked. Now she understood fully the reason for her curves. They were two halves of one being, she and Vaelen. Imogen held out her arms and Vaelen covered her body with his, skin to skin, lips to lips, chest to breast, thigh to thigh, at every point of contact pulses jumping, blood rushing, that raw, exposed over-attenuated ragged feeling soothed with the balm of love.

He kissed her again, not gently this time but with hard passion, and she sighed. His hands caressed her face, her throat, her breasts, his thoughts encouraging her to follow, to mirror him, the pleasure painted on his face telling her that what she did to him felt exactly the same as what he did to her. His mouth, heated by hers, trailed kisses of fire onto her breasts, sucking her nipples so that she gasped as the needling, jolting pleasure took hold in her belly and in her sex. His erection was hard between her legs, the tip nudging at her damp entrance. She wanted him inside her. If she did not have him inside her now, she would, she would…

He read her thoughts, smiled with potent promise as he stroked her hair, and kissed her languorously. Then slowly, achingly slowly, he moved into her, and into her, and into her, his thick shaft making her muscles clench and shiver, little pulses of pleasure like sprays of stars arcing up, lighting her from the inside. Vaelen tilted her carefully and pushed higher. She moaned and clutched at his back, pulling him to her. He kissed her—a deep, hot crimson kiss, dark with delight. He said her name, or thought it.

Imogen.

Vaelen.

Then he moved, slowly withdrawing to the tip of his manhood, slowly back, and again, and again, each time a little faster, a little harder, saying her name in time. His eyes were fixed on hers, watching every nuance of pleasure as he thrust and withdrew, saying her name with each thrust,
Imogen, Imogen, Imogen.
She felt herself swelling and shattering at the same time. She cried out, and bucked under him, felt him swelling too, felt the contraction of his own climax seconds after her own, his pulsing and her pulsing together. He filled her. She was so shattered with pleasure that she thought she would fly apart were he not holding her, melding into her, kissing her.

“Now,” she panted. “I love you, Vaelen. Do it now.”

He hesitated. Looked deep into her eyes and saw no hesitation at all. “I love you, my own darling Imogen.” His voice was husky with something that in another being would be tears. He licked the pulse that beat at her throat. “I love you,” he said fervently. “I love you.” A prayer.

Then he fastened his lips on the tender skin of her neck.