Poison in the Blood (14 page)

“We should wait. There are only a few months left until your year is complete.”

“I can’t stand being parted from you for another moment. Let me make love to you.”

That sent a shiver of an entirely different sort through me. I had not seen Michael in months, but it had been longer than that since we had last shared a bed, due to my last pregnancy and the difficulties of Robert’s birth. As I stared up into his dark eyes, the temptation of spending a lustful hour with my husband was more than I could resist, gods help me, and I nodded my assent.

With an eager moan he crushed me to him and kissed me until I was dizzy. When I came up for air I quickly unbuttoned his shirt as he unfastened my dress. After my trip to Faerie and back the poor garment had seen better days, but I barely gave it a second thought as the fabric fluttered to the floor and Michael pressed me back toward the bed. I despaired at the amount of clothing we both still wore as he covered me with hungry kisses. When I reached for his trousers I flinched as the bite of fangs pierced my neck.

It startled me, because aside from the unfortunate incident with Mr. Farrell, the few times I had been fed from before had been chaste bites from my wrist, and Simon had only used enough magic to make the experience painless. There was nothing chaste about this, and I moaned in ecstasy as pure pleasure crashed through me. The spell was deliciously lurid and wanton, and I wanted more, as much as I could get.

With one hand he held my head in place as he drank, and with the other he teased my nipples as they strained against my cotton chemise. Then his attentions moved lower, hauling my skirt up and plunging his hand between my spread thighs. A bright wave of pleasure sizzled in my veins as I climaxed at his touch alone. Lord and Lady, how could such a simple thing feel so amazing?

Michael drew away and I fell in a boneless, shameless heap atop the bed. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Oh, darling, yes,” I purred. Quite better than all right, in fact, but my mind was too hazy with afterglow to form more complex words.

With a wicked grin he removed his clothes at breakneck speed, and mine as well. Michael kissed me again, deeply and passionately, when he joined me on the bed, and I tasted my blood on his lips and tongue. It was a strange thing—not entirely unwelcome, but different.

Though the hard length of his manhood pressed against me, he didn’t enter me, and instead began kissing a tantalizing trail down my body. He paused at my breasts, teasing the taut peaks with his hands, lips and tongue, and then continued on. My face burned with a blush as his lips brushed my inner thigh, and then, much to my surprise, he bit me again. For a moment I was confused, for it seemed an odd place to bite someone, but then the magic overwhelmed me and I choked down a scream of pure delight that would have woken the entire household.

Perhaps I had been thinking of this blood donation matter in the entirely wrong way…

As he steadied my leg with one hand, he teased my sex with the other, his nimble fingers alternately stroking my throbbing bud and plunging inside of me. Adrift in the exquisite sensations, I lost all sense of time. There was only my lover, and the endless pleasure of him.

When he withdrew he hovered above me once more, and finally sheathed his shaft inside me. I arched against him with an eager moan, wrapping my arms around him and holding him close as he thrust with a desperate pace. Michael murmured soft endearments and proclamations of his love for me, and I returned them in kind. Dear gods, I had missed him so terribly, and it seemed as though our lovemaking healed a wound I hadn’t even known had formed during our time apart.

Michael lowered his lips to my throat and bit me again, and I gasped and begged him not to stop. I had never felt so taken before, so consumed by my lover as he devoured me with his mouth and his sex. The magic of the bite swamped me with pleasure as each thrust filled me, until I was filled with so much sensation that I could hardly breathe. My eyes slid shut as I gasped, moaned and whimpered, and as I sank into a warm cloud of pleasure I realized that something was wrong, because my arms and legs were suddenly too heavy to move. My eyes refused to open, and a cold spike of fear shot through me as unconsciousness took me, for I was suddenly taken with the idea that this time I might not wake up at all.

Chapter Ten

As Justine had commented, I was prone to fainting at inopportune moments. I had long ago lost count of the number of times I was overtaken by a sudden swoon. It was simply an unfortunate fact of my life, and I dealt with it as best as I was able.

Fainting due to blood loss was new, however, and as I drifted back toward consciousness I found I did not care for it. I felt ill in ways my visions had never caused, such as aching, pinpricked limbs and a proliferation of bright spots that danced just inside my eyelids. My eyes were still too heavy to open and my mouth refused to form any words whatsoever, so I listened to the goings-on around me.

There was a terrible amount of shouting. I recognized Michael and Simon’s voices raised in an argument. Simon was furious, and Michael was apologetic. The warm green glow of Dr. Bennett’s energy was seated beside me, and I sensed that he was healing me with a lovely, soothing spell. There was weariness in his energy; it was very late, and no one should be awake at this hour. I wondered how he had fared with informing Miss Dubois of their status as soul mates, but my questions would have to wait until I was in greater control of my faculties.

Dr. Bennett left after a time, but the shouting remained. The emotions were clear, the bright reds of anger and the deep blues of heartache, but it was difficult to make out the precise words, so I concentrated. After all, I had little else to do at the moment. Michael was sobbing, and my heart ached for him. It was as much my fault as it was his, because I could have been more assertive in insisting that we wait. My weakness had helped to cause this, and I wouldn’t allow myself or Simon to place all the blame on Michael. Really, it would make me much happier to blame Simon. If he hadn’t insisted on turning Michael, none of this would have happened. But, as Michael had informed me, Simon did not have the authority to release him from his oath, and by keeping my husband in the Order he had ensured that our family’s honor remained intact. Perhaps I should thank him…

“You don’t know,” Simon snarled. “You can’t possibly comprehend what would have happened if you hadn’t come to your senses. You almost
killed her.
Is that what you want? Your soul mate’s blood on your hands? Would you take their mother away from your children for a few moments of lust?”

“Of course not—” Michael replied.

“Yet you almost did. A few more moments and Emily would have been dead at your hands. Did you think the rules were put in place to inconvenience you?”

Michael sighed. “No, but—”

“You were selfish and irresponsible and you cannot make a mistake like this again. Because next time you will kill her, and there is no coming back from grief like that. It will drive you mad. Destroy you like a cancer until there is nothing left of you but a shell. Who will look after your family then?”

Michael broke down into sobs again, and I longed to comfort him. My poor darling… Simon growled and told him to leave, and after my husband left the room, Simon took the place Dr. Bennett had vacated at my side.

I hardly wanted Simon St. Jerome as a nursemaid, and would have told him so in no short order if I had had the ability to speak. There was an odd gray melancholy about him as the anger faded, and when he placed his hand over mine I suddenly knew why.

You don’t know…there is no coming back from grief like that.

The vision dragged me away from my semiconscious state and pulled me down a long, dark tunnel into the blackness of unconsciousness. When I awoke I was standing in an unfamiliar library. The cool air was slightly damp, perfumed with the scent of dozens of candles. Librarians were surprisingly unconcerned about fire, for they covered their libraries in so many wards against the element it was a miracle that candles lit at all. I walked down silent aisles of bookshelves, noting that the leather-bound tomes were in varying states of decay. The books were very old, older than the books in Simon’s library.

Simon.
He had touched my hand and sparked this vision. This was Simon’s memory. Fueled by fresh curiosity, I hurried forward toward an area where the light was brighter, and emerged into the heart of the library. A massive wooden table dominated the center of the room, and a woman in a black gown lay atop it while Simon hovered over her. A ring of candles formed a protective circle around the scene, and even in the echo of the memory the circle thrummed with power.

The woman’s face was turned away from me, her focus on the dying fire in a nearby hearth. It was fading to embers, just as the woman’s energy was fading into nothing. She was dying slowly, and the scent of blood wafted toward me through the haze of candle wax. I edged around the circle to get a closer look at her. Her long, golden hair fanned out around her in thick waves, and I was startled by the realization that she looked a great deal like Miss Justine Dubois. I wondered if Simon saw the resemblance as well, and what he thought of it. A large hourglass was perched atop the table next to her body, and the sand slipped through it inexorably, with only a small amount left.

Simon looked the same as ever, though his expression was filled with such emotion that I would not have recognized him at first. Usually Simon was calm or scowling, but now he was panicked.

“Darling, look at me. I need you to drink again,” he ordered. He rolled up the sleeve of his black robes and offered the woman his wrist. His wardrobe had hardly changed. I never understood his obsession with dressing like a billowing storm cloud. She barely managed to shake her head and turn away.

“I can’t. It’s not working. You have to let me go.” Her voice was terribly weak, and I hugged my arms to my chest and shivered as though I could feel the embrace of death devouring her.

Simon grabbed her shoulders and shook her, trying to wake her. “
No
. The spell will work, I know it will. Now
drink
.”

“No. It’s over. I’m sorry. I love you.” Her pale lashes fluttered as her eyelids slid shut, and Simon shook her again.

“Genevieve?
Genevieve
! No, don’t go. Don’t leave me,” he wailed, his voice filled with heartbreak. I would not have thought it possible before, but I felt sorry for Simon. He clearly loved his woman very much. She must have been his wife—

Is that what you want? Your soul mate’s blood on your hands?
It will drive you mad. Destroy you like a cancer until there is nothing left of you but a shell.

Lord and Lady. This woman wasn’t just his lover or wife. She was his soul mate.

Simon pulled Genevieve into his arms and held her, but it was clear that she was gone. He sobbed, begging and pleading with her to stay, bargaining with the higher powers to spare her, and as he wept I found myself shedding tears for Simon St. Jerome, which must surely be a sign of the end of days.

The last grain of sand slipped through the hourglass, and the glass shattered. Simon flinched at the noise. He laid her body back down, picked the hourglass up and hurled it across the room into the fire. Filled with rage and grief, he tore through the surrounding room, smashing and overturning furniture. The vision vanished as a chair sailed through my spectral form, and everything was dark again.

How dreadful it must have been for Simon to have lost his soul mate like that. One day Michael would lose me. Would the grief drive him mad? But he would have our children, and their children, generations of future descendants to comfort him and remind him of what we had together.

Simon didn’t have anyone—except for Michael, the only student he had ever mentored. Had Michael brought him out of his grief, only to remind Simon of it again when I discovered that Michael and I were soul mates? No wonder he disliked me. I reminded him of everything he had lost.

When I became conscious again I was able to open my eyes, and Simon was still seated at my side, though his attention was on the book he was reading. It was the book from my nightstand, a copy of
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
by Mary Wollstonecraft that Justine had lent me from her library. Judging by his frown, he didn’t find the material as compelling as I did. I took a deep breath, preparing to ask him…something, and he looked up from his reading.

“Feeling better?” he asked, and I nodded. “Dr. Bennett recommended that you have something to eat and drink. Let me help you sit up.”

I nodded again, and was surprised by how much energy it took. I trembled, either from weariness or cold. Perhaps even a bit of fear. Simon eased me into a sitting position and then brought me a tea tray. He even poured my cup of tea, and I wondered if I was still dreaming.

“Thank you.” I wrapped my hands around the cup, allowing the warmth to sink into my fingers. “How did you end up as nursemaid?”

The corners of his mouth twitched. “Everyone else is asleep. Plus I feel somewhat responsible for this situation, because Michael is under my supervision. I should have kept closer watch over him.”

“Michael and I are both adults. I could have said no, but I didn’t. I am equally at fault here.”

He sat back in his chair. “It is difficult to say no, after having been bitten. Some might say it is impossible to object to a bite.”