Masks (22 page)

Mircea started to comply, but something stopped him. Some clue in the tension in her spine, the look in her eyes, he didn’t know. He wasn’t as adept at reading this language of the body as she was, but he knew desire when he saw it.

And hers wasn’t for unquestioning obedience.

Which worked out well, since neither was his.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded when, instead of complying, he started circling her slowly. Examining her as she had him.

Hair a true auburn: not brown, not red, but a perfect combination of the two. It complimented her complexion, which was naturally the pearlescent white so prized in Venice that some women were known to paint egg whites on their faces to emulate it. Breasts high and firm, and shown off to advantage by the low cut dress. Sweet rounded neck, delicate jawline, dainty, feminine features—

And large blue eyes snapping at him angrily.

In short, she was beautiful.

But he doubted it was her looks that made her so sought after. There was an underlying sweetness about Auria. She mostly managed to hide it behind a tough outer shell, but he’d caught glimpses of it on occasion. And not just when she’d cried for Sanuito—the only one who had. But in the flutter of thick black lashes, in the edge of a lip caught between snow white teeth, or like now, in a flash of uncertainty in blue, blue eyes.

Until she saw him notice, and her brows drew together. “I
said
—”

“I heard you. And I am acceding to a lady’s wishes.”

“The lady wishes you on the bed.”

“No,” Mircea said, watching her.

“No?”

“No, the lady doesn’t,” he elaborated. “The lady doesn’t want me here at all. That’s why she had others here to start with. Why she wore such formal attire—”

“I didn’t dress for you.”

“Didn’t you? You usually wear Turkish dress about the house,” Mircea pointed out, referring to the long, open sided robes the ladies of Venice had borrowed from their eastern sisters. Worn over a loose chemise, with simple flat-soled slippers, it was a far more comfortable outfit that that considered suitable for the street. “Yet today . . .”

“This is what I felt like wearing.”

“It’s lovely.”

“
Get on the bed
.”

“You seem insistent.”

“And you seem stubborn!”

“As you said, I never did learn to take orders well.”

Beautiful blue eyes narrowed. “A fact that will soon change.”

“But not here. Here is where you work, where pleasure is turned into a business—”

“That’s the business we’re in, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“—so you can’t be yourself here.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“I think I am. In that bed you’re not Auria. You’re Venice’s most expensive courtesan. In that bed, you’re whoever your clients want you to be, so that they do what you want them to do, whether they realize it or not—”

“You’re damned right they do.”

“But none of them give you what you really want.”

“Don’t they?” An eyebrow arched. “Look around.”

“I have. But amassing a fortune . . . that’s what the lady wants. What the courtesan wants. What does Auria want?”

Mircea saw her face shut down. “Auria doesn’t want anything.”

“Everyone wants something.”

“Auria doesn’t.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t care what you believe.”

“I think perhaps Auria hasn’t been asked what she wants, in a long time—”

“Auria doesn’t exist anymore! This,” she gestured around. “This is who I am now!”

Mircea caught her hand. “Here,” he agreed. “So let’s not stay here.”

“What?” She looked at him half in anger, half in confusion.

“We’ll go to my room.”

“Your—that cubbyhole?” She was clearly appalled.

“It has a bed.”

“And fleas, most like!”

“Not that I’ve noticed. But I’ll check for you—”

“No need.” Auria pulled her hand back and crossed her arms. “I’m staying here.”

“Afraid?”

“Of what?” She snorted and looked him up and down. “Of you?”

“No, of you. Of Auria. Of what she may want.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Oh. Then you’re afraid you can’t work your magic in less . . . salubrious . . . surroundings? That you won’t be as alluring in a garret as in a palace?”

“Trust you to know about palaces.”

“Castles, in my country. And a garret here is far more comfortable.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true,” Mircea said, repressing a smile. “They’re terribly uncomfortable, castles. Great, ugly, gray stone things, with a perpetual chill, even in summer. Tiny rooms, to make them easier to heat. But it doesn’t work, because most don’t have fireplaces, so you have to make do with braziers. Which leaves them smoky and drafty and still cold.”

Auria was looking like she didn’t believe him. Mircea decided to up the ante. It wasn’t as if he was lying.

“Miniscule windows, for defense, you know. And great hulking walls beyond them, so everything’s always gloomy. And the stench!” He made an elaborate face. “The garderobes let out straight into the moat—if you’re lucky enough to have a moat—and unlike in Venice, there’s no tide to carry anything away. Oh, and speaking of garderobes—”

“Let’s not.”

“They’re damned inconvenient. Wherever you are, it’s almost guaranteed they’re on the opposite side of the castle, down some narrow, freezing, uneven corridor, which you have to navigate in the middle of the night, desperately needing to relieve yourself—”

“Stop it.”

“—clutching your blanket around your freezing, naked body, because you waited too long to get dressed—”

“Stop it!”

“—and stubbing your bare toes and bashing into walls in your hurry. And then cursing fit to make a sailor blush when you find somebody
already in there
—”

“There are chamber pots!” she said, giving up and laughing.

“Small rooms, remember? Trust me, the garderobe was preferable.”

“I can’t believe we’re talking about this!”

“And then there were the fleas—”

“There were no fleas!”

“There were always fleas. The damned dogs went everywhere, including curling up in the middle of your bed whether you wanted them there or not. Although, on cold nights, the fleas seemed a small price to pay for the added warmth.”

“I had a dog as a child. It had fleas.” Auria smiled. “I don’t recall minding.”

Mircea didn’t recall it, either. “In short, if you want the true castle experience, my room is really much more—”

“Oh, all right!”

Mircea blinked. “All right?”

“What’s the matter? Didn’t you expect that to work?”

“Not . . . really.” It was the first time he’d persuaded a girl into bed by mentioning the possibility of fleas.

Then he noticed something.

“Why are you getting undressed?”

“This may come as a shock to you, but it’s generally considered customary.”

“But . . . here?”

“You live in a garret,” she said, pulling off her embroidered, pearl encrusted sleeves and tossing them on the bed. “There’s no room up there.”

Mircea opened his mouth to argue the point, and then shut it quickly, wondering what the hell was wrong with him.

Fortunately, she was sliding the dress over her head and didn’t see.

The dress pulled her hair down along with it, including the strand of pearls that Mircea caught just before they followed the fate of the coral. He put them carefully on the dressing table, beside the overflowing cask of other jewelry, and looked up. And froze.

Auria had gotten rid of the chemise, too, apparently finding the wrinkles too much to bear. She stepped out of the mules as he watched, leaving herself nude. Except for a rippling veil of auburn hair that cascaded down her body, half concealing a shape that Aphrodite might have envied.

And a pair of fine white silk stockings held on by pink ribbon garters.

“Are you coming or not?” she demanded, peering out the door.

“I—a robe,” Mircea choked.

“No robes.” She looked at him over her shoulder, pink cheeked and laughing. “Ready?”

“I—we can go up the back—”

“And hear about it from Cook for the next month? No, thank you.” She paused, and then grinned like a girl. “Let’s make this interesting.”

Mircea was personally finding it plenty interesting enough. “Interesting?”

“If you reach your garret before I do, you can have me. Otherwise . . . I get to have you.”

“There is a difference?”

She smiled, and the quality of it changed enough to send his heart racing. And then she was off, streaking down the corridor and past a servant with a tray, who upended it in shock as she bolted by. And then bent to retrieve it only to have Mircea almost crash into him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Mircea muttered, dancing around the bemused man, and then streaking on, past the parlor where he really hoped no unsuspecting tradesmen were waiting, through the entryway and up the stairs, almost crashing into Paulo coming down.

“What the—”

“Martina’s orders,” Mircea breathed, and ran on, knocking over a vase and grabbing it. He settled it back on its plinth with hands shaking hard enough that it fell back off again. “Damn it!”

“You’re losing.”

He looked up to see Auria looking down on him from the floor above. And probably giving anyone behind her a heart attack as she leaned over the landing to taunt him. And then she disappeared, followed by the sound of lightly pattering feet.

Mircea dropped the damned vase and ran—right into Marte, who had come out of her room to see what the fuss was about.

“Well, well,” she said, grinning.

“I—excuse me,” Mircea breathed, dodging around her.

He felt a sharp slap on his backside as he bolted off again. “Don’t mention it.”

Damn it! But he didn’t even have time to turn around and glare at her, because he was racing up the stairs at vampire speed, which was probably cheating since Auria hadn’t been using it. But she hadn’t specifically exempted it, either, and a man had to do what a man had to—

“Goddamnit!”

Mircea glared at a very startled Bezio, who had been coming out of the door of his room, only to be stopped by collision with a speeding vampire. And then by the sight of who was lounging against the wall, just in front of Mircea’s room, looking amused. Bezio’s jaw dropped.

Auria stepped across the threshold, just down the hall from where Mircea was clutching his friend. “I win.”

The door shut, and Bezio looked at him. “Looks to me like you won, son.”

Mircea swallowed.

Time to find out.

Naked and spread-eagled, Mircea fought uselessly against the invisible bonds that trapped him. Muscles bunched in his arms, his thighs bulged and strained, and he exerted enough force to punch through a brick wall. Yet nothing changed. Except that a slide of invisible strength tightened around his upper thighs, squeezing a warning as Auria approached the bed.

She looked him over critically.

“How are you doing this?” he demanded.

“Age has its privileges.” She ran the back of a single nail up his length, adjusting it slightly, making it perfectly perpendicular. “As does youth.”

Mircea wasn’t seeing a lot of privileges right now. The power that held him held all of him, making it impossible for him to do anything but lie there and shudder all over, uselessly. And watch as she put a dainty, silk-covered foot on the bed, and toyed with the ribbon holding up her stockings.

They were fine white silk, instead of the more common linen or wool. And were knitted to better follow the shape of the leg, instead of woven. They had a pattern of vines and flowers across the tops and more down the sides, and had probably cost a month’s salary for a laborer.

But that wasn’t what had his mouth going dry.

He wanted to pull those garters off with his teeth. He wanted his hand to be the one to roll down the stockings, revealing dimpled knees, sweetly rounded calves, and trim ankles. He wanted his fingers to caress the arch of the foot before slowly pulling them off, exposing dainty white flesh, so sweet and so forbidden—

The toenails were gilded.

He closed his eyes.

“The secret of passion is to make her want it,” she murmured. “Bring her to the brink and then deny her, over and over again. Until she is almost mad with desire. Until she can think of nothing and no one else.”

“Is that what you do?” Mircea gritted out.

“Of course.

“It’s torture.”

“It works.”

“So does shared passion. So does genuine affection. So does mutual respect—”

“That is for when you care about someone. Not for what we do.”

“You don’t care about your clients?”

“No. And neither will you, if you’re smart.”

Mircea started to reply, but then the stocking, still warm from her body, was draped around his length.

And the words died in his throat.

“Make her forget the other men she knows,” Auria murmured, sliding the soft mass slowly around him. “The other experiences she’s had. They pale in comparison with this. There is only her, and you, and the need . . . growing . . . aching . . . desperate. . . .”

Oh, he was desperate, Mircea thought, straining with everything he had against the hold she had on him.

And going exactly nowhere.

“. . . yet unfulfilled,” Auria said, sounding amused. “Give just enough to madden, never enough to satisfy.”

“How about enough to live?” Mircea snarled, because a human would have had a heart attack by now.

“I don’t think sexual frustration is one of the ways to kill a vampire.”

“Maybe they need to update the list!”

“Maybe you should tell the senator that, when next you see her.”

“I don’t know that I’ll be seeing her—”

“It’s only been four days,” she told him. “Just wait.”

“—nor that I want to.”

It was the truth. An inconvenient one, since convocation would be over soon and he was supposed to make his escape. An escape that would not work if he didn’t have a patron willing to protect him—and Bezio, and Jerome, if he wished to come—in Paris. He
needed
to see her, needed to somehow convince her to take them on, three useless vampires.

But it wasn’t what he wanted to do. She was too powerful, too overwhelming. He was afraid of what she might want, and what he might get drawn into as a result.

Mircea might not know what he wanted from this new life, but he was very clear on what he didn’t. And he didn’t want to be drawn into another political dynasty. To be under someone else’s control, to have their rules hedge him in, their decisions move his hand. To have their ambitions supersede everything he might value.

He’d been that; he’d done that. His whole life had been as a pawn, being moved about by someone else’s will. His death wasn’t going to be, too.

“I don’t want a master,” he said, and Auria laughed.

“I think you actually mean it.”

“I do. Why is that funny?”

“It’s not. It’s . . . ironic. You don’t care anything about the opportunity you’ve been given, while I would give everything I have—”

“For what?”

“For a master’s touch,” she said, and straddled him.

“You could have any master you want.” Mircea might not know vampire society, but he knew men. And, hell, probably most women. He couldn’t see too many people kicking Auria out of bed—or denying her whatever she asked.

But she didn’t seem to agree.

“Not any.”

“Who would turn you down?”

“One who already did.”

It took Mircea a moment to realize what she meant. “But he threw you out! Tried to kill you—”

“Doesn’t matter. It is our nature.”

“It wouldn’t be mine!”

“You don’t have a master,” Auria pointed out. “How would you know?”

“But others here have. And I don’t see any of them mourning the ones who threw them out!”

“I think Jerome does, a little. Although at least he has the consolation of death. His master is gone; he cannot get him back. They say it makes it easier.”

“But . . . Paulo—”

“And Zaneta and Danieli and the rest. Yes, I know. It doesn’t take everyone the same way.”

“It would seem to be damned rare!”

“Not really. I would say the opposite, in fact.”

“Then where are all the heartbroken vamp—” Mircea began, before seeing the truth in her face.

“Where do you think? You know how many die here, every day. How many more never make it this far? And many of them are not hunted. There are those who find that sort of thing amusing, certainly. But others simply find them . . . sad. They don’t want them, but they don’t want to harm them, either. Some even help them get this far.”

Trust him not to have found any of those, Mircea thought, grimacing. But he should have known there would be some. Vampires weren’t the two-dimensional monsters of his childhood fables, mindless, greedy, and savage. But a complicated mix, some decent, some anything but, just like the humans they had once been.

It had been Auria’s luck, and his, to see the worst side of the race. But there was good in it, too. He’d seen that as well, recently. And there could be more of it, much more, if—

His thoughts broke off when she suddenly took him inside her, in a single, unexpected movement that left him gasping.

But not in pleasure. After being deprived for so long, after aching for so long, the overwhelming wash of sensation was almost another form of torture. One made worse by the fact that he
still couldn’t move.

He couldn’t slide his hands up the back of her thighs, and grasp the taut mounds above. Couldn’t kiss the softer mounds in front, or mouth the pale pink nipples. Couldn’t touch the long line of her body as she stretched up, finding the ring at the peak of his sloping ceiling, which had once supported a lantern.

And which now supported the weight of a beautiful courtesan as she began to undulate.

She closed her eyes, one slender arm holding the ring, the other draped behind her head, holding back the glorious weight of her hair. Letting him see everything he couldn’t have. Like the faint sheen of sweat that began to slick her skin. . . .

In desperation, Mircea looked away, but it didn’t help.

There was nothing else like the feel of a woman’s body. No other pleasure came close to the supple, yielding strength of it, the warm, satiny feel of it, the rich, intoxicating scent. He didn’t think he could ever get enough of the little sounds they made, the feel of them squirming against him, the surge of pride that came from making them—

“God!” Mircea almost came off the bed when a small tendril of her power suddenly coiled around his base, denying his release.

And then things became stranger still when it began to move as she did. Expanding and contracting, forcing him to meet her thrust for thrust. Making his own participation in this almost irrelevant.

I’ll take you,
she’d said, and he suddenly, vividly, realized what she’d meant. He was there for her pleasure, not the other way around. And it felt . . . he couldn’t . . . this wasn’t how . . .
unhh.

“The ones you see here are those who do not feel that way,” she told him, continuing their former conversation as if nothing was happening. “Or are those who decided to live in spite of it.”

Mircea stared up at her. The damned woman wasn’t even breathing hard!

“Perhaps . . . it will fade . . . in time,” he said, because if she could, he could.

“It doesn’t. How can it? It’s part of you, they’re part of you—literally, for they gave you life. It is their blood that animates you, that called you back from death. You are meant to be together, your whole being knows it.”

“I can’t . . . imagine feeling . . . that way.”

“Can’t you?” She changed position suddenly, forcing a groan out of him. “It’s something like that,” she told him. “But all the time. But not just physical; it’s mental, emotional—almost spiritual. An utterly helpless longing to touch him, to be beside him, just to hear his voice. Even when you know he doesn’t care as you do, even when you realize that it’s all on your side, it doesn’t lessen the need. It’s the worst thing in the world when they reject you.”

“Anyone . . . who could reject you . . . is a fool,” Mircea snarled.

“Then the world is full of fools,” she said lightly.

And the next second, she was at his throat.

Soft lips instead of hard teeth, but still, so close. It sent a shiver through him that resonated from his body and up into hers. He knew she felt it when she smiled, ferally.

“Which do you want more,” she asked. “Blood or sex? And think carefully, for you can only have one.”

Mircea opened his mouth to say sex, because
clearly.

But then he closed it again as that long, white throat slid along his. He could feel her heartbeat, a quick flutter against his skin, and then slower, heavier, until it synchronized with his own. Until it felt like his own, like his blood was in her body, was in her body and was waiting to be reclaimed.

He felt his fangs descend.

But it was hers that scraped against his skin, not tearing, not even pricking. Just brushing, delicate, teasing, maddening. He heard himself growl, a frightening sound. He hadn’t lost that much control since—

He tried to rein himself in, but she was doing it again. Sliding her throat along his, her pulse along his, and now her body as well. Slick, wet friction and undulating muscles and a pulse pounding, pounding, pounding in his throat, in his head, in his—

“Only one,” she whispered, and it was absurd.

“I can’t—”

“You can. You did it with the senator, did you not?”

“Yes, but—”

“Sex without blood is meaningless for most of us. Blood magnifies everything in our world, including pleasure. But, apparently, you are different.”

“I’m not—”

“But you are. You’ve demonstrated that twice now. So, for you, only one.”

Her lips caught his, in a sweet caress that was nothing like what he wanted. It was soft and gentle when he wanted
hard
, when he wanted
piercing
, when he wanted warm and metallic and—

“Only one,” she told him, sucking right over his pounding pulse, pulling it into her mouth, letting him feel her hunger, her need—

Only to let it out again, unbroken.

“Only one,” she murmured, as he choked.

“Only one,” and she sped up, taking it from torture to something for which he had no words.

“Only one,” she warned, as finally, finally, she released him, the power snapping that had held him down, that had kept him captive, that had kept him from—

“Only one,” she laughed, as his fangs slid into her skin, at the same moment that his body surged into her flesh, as he took from her and spilled into her in equal measure
. This
was how it was supposed to be,
this
was what he was, what he’d been driven mad for,
this,
and
this,
and
this. . . .

Moments later, she had finally lost her breath, but not the wicked sparkle in her eyes. “You really are
 . . .
bad . . . at taking orders,” she told him.

“And not likely to get any better,” Mircea growled, and rolled her into the sheets.