Blood Wicked (16 page)

The two men procured four black silk robes. Julian helped Sarah into one. Vivienne pulled hers on with a sigh of relief. It was sumptuous and warm, and finally both she and Sarah were respectably covered. The men bade them follow and led them through the house.

Heath, she noticed, was watching Julian, too.

Within moments, they were passing through a large ballroom. A trio of violinists played, but the guests were not dancing. Beautiful men and women, attired in the most astonishing clothing, lounged on plush chaises of velvet. The women wore only tightly laced corsets and stockings with satin garters of scarlet. Red lace adorned their bodies; some wore satin ribbons around their necks. They drank champagne from gold flutes. Vivienne spied nothing more scandalous than couples enjoying kisses, but she panicked. They were dressed so suggestively, there was a sense of the erotic even about the low, murmured conversations. Breasts were on display everywhere. One handsome man began to remove his shirt.
Sarah
. Sarah should not see this.

Heath made a motion to Julian with his hand. Vivienne jerked around. At Heath’s instruction, Julian had covered Sarah’s eyes with his hand. And her naive daughter was protesting. “Really,” Sarah complained, “I am not a child.”

No, but I still want you to be innocent
, Vivienne thought desperately. “This is impossible. I cannot let Sarah stay here.”

Heath leaned close to her. His voice was soft and seductive.
“I would not have brought her to a place that’s not safe. Dimitri keeps an apartment in the house for vampires who need sanctuary. Those rooms are off limits to his other guests, and no vampire would dream of defying one of Dimitri’s rules. I promise you Sarah can stay there in complete safety.”

She supposed she should be thankful he hadn’t pointed out she had nowhere else to go. It was the truth, wasn’t it? Her house wasn’t safe. The town house she had almost sold her soul to purchase: could they ever return to it?

But that way led to madness, so she concentrated on the present. “Dimitri?”

“A very old vampire.”

Why did he give her answers that told her precisely nothing? “I will stay with Sarah—” But she stopped as Heath shook his head.

He bent close. She felt his warm breath ripple over the rim of her ear. It sent shivers tumbling down her spine, ignited desire in her belly. And then—oh heavens—then the throbbing, the aching began.

“I will be bringing you downstairs,” he murmured. “You’ll need pleasure tonight, Vivienne.”

Awareness and warmth fled. Fear left her cold. Even when he murmured to her, “I will be at your side. I will take care of you. But I can’t make love to you.”

What on earth was he saying? “Why not? Don’t you—want me?”

“You have no idea how much I do. But I promise I will look after you—”

“Don’t. I don’t need anything.” But it wasn’t true. Her heart was hammering. “They gave me something to drink, Heath. I don’t know what it was, but it …” She lowered her voice to such a soft whisper, she wasn’t sure he would hear. “It makes me desire.”

He groaned. “Adder must have given you a potent aphrodisiac.”

The servant stopped at a door. Rapped. “Lord Blackmoor has arrived, Your Grace.”

A woman’s moan floated out into the corridor. A masculine voice, an impatient and terse baritone, followed. “Blackmoor? Has he come crawling back? Or is he stalking arrogantly back into my house, still cocksure of himself?”

The servant remained astonishingly impassive. “He is accompanied by guests. He arrived quite naked, Your Grace. The ladies accompanying him were also inadequately dressed. It is obvious they are in need of your help.”

“Ladies? He brought ladies? Intriguing,” came the deep voice from behind the door. “Blackmoor must be in trouble. Send them all in.”

Vivienne tucked the sheets around Sarah’s slumbering form. Sarah was curled up, her arms wrapped around the soft, white pillow. The bed was enormous, dripping with silk tassels and lace.

For the moment, they were safe. Dimitri, the mysterious vampire everyone referred to as “Your Grace,” even though he denied being a duke, had allowed her and Sarah to stay in this ostentatious apartment. For as long as they required.

Dimitri had proved to be a handsome giant of a man, six and a half feet tall. He possessed dark, chocolate-brown hair, a long, autocratic nose, and jet-black eyes. He looked a bit like the leader of the vampire council, Adder, but his face, even with his strong features, had looked more gentle. He had done nothing but smile at her and Sarah.

They had been taken into a parlor attached to Dimitri’s bedchamber, passing a woman who lay on a chaise, sipping tea, and awaiting her “lord” to finish his business. Handsome Dimitri
had worn fashions from the previous century: a silk coat of pale green with six inches of lace at his cuffs.

With a clap of his hands, he’d sent an army of servants in search of clothing and food. Vivienne now wore one of the dresses provided, a scarlet silk masterpiece. It flowed over her body as though made for her. Underneath frothing skirts she could see her heavenly soft silk slippers, which were embroidered with exotic gold-colored diamonds.

The slippers alone must be worth thousands of pounds.

But she had watched the two men, Heath and Dimitri, just before maids had arrived to sweep her and Sarah upstairs to bathe, dress, and settle into the splendid rooms. Heath had looked haunted, Dimitri furious.

What was between the two men?

“Mmmm,” Sarah murmured in her sleep. Vivienne was afraid of waking her. She moved from the bed to the window, where drapes of black covered the glass.

Her hair was clean and fell down her back in loose ringlets. All the paint put on her by the vampire’s servants was gone. She was safe, but she felt restless. What was going to happen to her and Sarah? Where could they go to be truly safe? Regardless of Dimitri’s verbal generosity, she didn’t believe he intended to let them stay forever.

She didn’t want to. She yearned to go home. But how was she going to keep Sarah safe from the council of vampires—from their weapons, their bats, their utter madness?

Vivienne paced, fanning herself nervously with her hand.

Only days ago, before meeting Heath, she didn’t believe vampires existed. And now, she was living amongst some of them and hiding from others.

Could she and Sarah run away? Make a home somewhere where they would be safe and not attacked again? But what of Sarah’s illness? Sarah was strong and healthy now because of
Heath. She could not take her daughter away from Heath, because Sarah would get sick again….

She stopped. Cold had swept over her suddenly and she had to rub her arms. It had been like this for the last hour. She would get hot enough to burst into flame. She would be sweating and fanning herself desperately. Then, seconds later, her temperature would plunge to iciness.

And now the pain began. It started throbbing in her womb. It would spread soon, just as it had done before. On the night she had made love with Heath.

Someone knocked on her door. “Vivienne, love. Will you come with me? Julian and two servants will watch Sarah.”

It was Heath. He must have come to take her downstairs, to the rooms where vampires indulged all their carnal desires. She hurried to the door and opened it. “I don’t want to leave her. I can endure the pain.”

Vivienne saw Heath’s seductive mouth flatten into a firm line. “You can’t, love. They gave you a potion to heighten your lust. The pain will be far, far worse tonight.”

Heath leaned on the doorframe and drank in the sight of Vivienne in a scandalous scarlet dress. The neckline was a low scoop, cupping her breasts and lifting them into generous mounds. Her gown clung so tightly to her, it looked more like a deep blush than that she was dressed. He wanted to plant his boot in Dimitri’s arse. She looked like she’d been made to be ravished, and Dimitri knew Heath couldn’t make love to Vivi again. This was obviously Dimitri’s idea of a joke.

And now he got to watch the other vampires in the house desire Vivi, seduce her, pleasure her. He would have to convince her to willingly go to another man. To let another man save her life.

He’d been cursed because he deserved it. Shouldn’t he be enjoying the pain?

She and Sarah were safe here. This time, he hadn’t failed two
innocents who depended on him. But he wanted to make love to Vivienne. He wanted to savor her, pour out his longing for her, work out his terror over the danger to her. But he couldn’t.

Ruefully, he smiled down at her. “You’re going to need to have a night of wild, wanton sex. It’s the only thing that will undo the effects of that potion.”

Vivienne bit her lush lower lip. “Oh dear,” she whispered. She sagged against the door, and put her hand to her forehead.

He slid his hand there, too. She was on fire.

“I’m afraid to leave Sarah.”

He moved his hand. Just touching her had him hard and throbbing with need. “She’ll be safe. The council can’t infiltrate this place. No one who is a guest here would risk angering Dimitri by approaching her. And no one here would try to seduce an unwilling woman.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are dozens of willing ones. And because Dimitri and I would rip him apart.” He sighed. “Now, I need to thoroughly rescue you. Very soon, you will be in desperate need of sex—and lots of it.”

“And you won’t do it again,” she said. She spoke flatly. It was that emotionless voice women used that truly condemned a man.

He felt damned, more than he ever had. “Hades, if I could, I would lock you into your bedchamber and spend the night making love to you. But I can’t because I’m cursed.”

She touched his chest. Christ, her fingers felt like fire against him.

“You mean, you are cursed with being a vampire?”

“No, my curse is something different. It’s a magical thing, placed on me by my sire when I was turned—”

“Turned?”

“It’s a term we vampires use for the moment when another vampires bites us, then feeds us his blood to make us one of
them. My sire, the vampire who made me, used an ancient spell to curse me. If I make love to any woman twice, I transform from a vampire into a demon.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how it works exactly.”

“But what sort of demon? I mean—”

“You mean, aren’t I one already?” He groaned. “No, love, because I control my own urges. The kind of demon I would turn into is a violent monster. I would have the power to rip England apart, to completely destroy it. I was told I would have enough power to bring about the end the world.”

Her blue eyes were wide with fear. Her tempting breasts rose and fell. She stepped out into the corridor, closed the door to her daughter’s room behind her. “But you don’t know. You’ve never turned into a demon before.”

Vivienne was dangerous. She seemed to see into his thoughts, seemed to find the darkest things in his heart. He wanted to believe he could make love to her and get away with it.

“I have,” he said softly. “When I was turned and cursed, I was given a demonstration of what my transformation would be like. My sire had a sorcerer enslaved to him. He instructed this old man to give me a taste of what I would become if I was foolish enough to disobey the curse. With magic, he transformed me into a demon, then changed me back. I was a demon for a half a minute, and in that short time, I did several unspeakable things. So no, I’ve never dared take the risk.”

Now the magnificent décolleté on display to him was blushing pink. If he bent and kissed her lips, kissed that deep valley between her breasts, then lifted her skirts and tongued her cunny, where would she be hottest?

“So you truly have never made love to any woman twice?” Vivi asked.

“Since I became a vampire. The curse was payment for my wife’s death. Intended to ensure I never knew what it was to
love again. Or if I did fall in love, I got to suffer without being able to make love.” Heath shut his eyes, but even that didn’t spare him from temptation. She smelled of rose soap from her bath. “But right now I am thinking about what it would be like to make love to you again.”

Vivienne wanted to deny the ache growing in her. But she couldn’t. “Well, then, we have a problem. Because you say I need to make love.”

Heath’s fist banged against the plaster beside the door. Suddenly his teeth grew before her eyes, turning into long fangs. But the sight of him didn’t frighten her. “I know,” he growled. “Hades, how I know that. And tonight, I will have the honor of watching you be very well pleasured. Come, Vivi.”

Vivi. She suddenly realized he had called her that a few times. Along with “Flower.” No one had called her by an affectionate nickname for ages. Not since her mother had called her Vivi, when she’d been little. In happier times. In Heath’s deep, seductive voice, the name sounded more … naughty.

He tried to coerce her to walk with him, but she resisted, digging in the heels of her borrowed slippers. “Exactly what do you think you are going to be watching?”

Then all he said were those two infuriating words. “Trust me.”

They asked for so much. “No. You must tell me what you think I am going to do.”

“Dimitri has told me there are four very experienced vampires who desire you. I don’t want to share you, but you need what I can’t give.”

Four very experienced … vampires? Goodness, he couldn’t mean she was supposed to make love to—to all of them at once, like Molly in the brothel? “Heath, no. I know you brought me here, but I don’t want any other man but you.”

“This is just erotic fun, Vivi. It’s not an expression of love but a chance for some play. And I intend to take part—at least
to watch. I would not miss seeing you experience sexual play for the world.”

Oh, she felt terribly unsure. Uncomfortable. “But aren’t you going to be … upset? Men are very possessive, I’ve learned.”

“This is part of the vampire world. Vampires do take mates, which is a deep joining of the heart. The games here don’t cause jealousy, because the mates know how strong their bond is. I could easily lose my heart to you, Vivienne, even though I know I shouldn’t. I recognize this is just a carnal game. Dimitri’s orgy will be beginning now, before dawn comes. Indulge me: spread your wings and play.”