“If you loved Ariadne, what of my mother? Did you also love her?”
His face hardened. “When I seduced Rose, she was very lovely. But she quickly became tiresome, once you were conceived. She clung. She begged. She was desperate and shrill and harsh. And she was weak. Instead of showing pride and spirit, she turned to gin. She grew numb. I never returned to her. I was disgusted.”
“How dare you speak of her like that!”
“When I found Ariadne, I understood then why I had become a vampire. I had waited for almost five centuries to find her. I offered her everything. But she was afraid of me. Afraid! When I would have cared for her for eternity. Instead she chose that bastard Blackmoor, and I had to return to the Carpathians.”
Nikolai—she could not think of him as her father—strode over to her and grasped her chin. Roughly jerking up her face, he forced her to meet his inky-black eyes. These were the eyes
of death, she thought, soulless and eternally cold. “You will make love to him again. If you do not, your daughter Sarah will be destroyed. There. It is as simple as that.”
“You—how could you? She’s an innocent. She is your grandchild!”
“A man who lives forever has no need for immortality by leaving brats behind. Children are created to serve their parents. And she will serve me this way. Come now, Vivienne, I know I could threaten you with any punishment or pain and you would defy me to protect Blackmoor. You love him. You will have to make a choice. Your beloved daughter or your beloved vampire.” He gave her a smile that made her want to vomit. “My dear daughter, I am not worried about being forced to destroy my granddaughter. I know the choice you will make.”
Guidon. He knew enough about Heath’s curse to believe it could be broken. Would he tell her what she must do? Did he know? But there was no way she could escape this bedchamber and find him. Not with her wrist shackled to the bedpost, and the door locked and barred.
If only she could speak in Guidon’s thoughts, the way she spoke in Heath’s …
Heavens
. Vivienne thought back to the tea she’d shared with Guidon. She barely remembered what he’d said to her, she had been so desperate to leave him and go in search of Heath. She’d put down her cup, but Guidon had insisted she drink it.
I made it especially for you
, he had said proudly.
I made it just as I knew you would like it. Almost as though I could read your mind
.
The little gnomelike man had flushed. Even though she was squirming on her seat in impatience, his shyness had been touching.
I hope we will talk again. There is much I could tell you. You have only to ask
.
Could the clever little librarian have thought up another trick? Had the tea contained something that would let her speak into Guidon’s mind?
She shut her eyes.
Guidon?
she asked tentatively.
Nothing.
Guidon? Can you hear me? Please say something, if you can. I need to speak to you about the curse. We must stop it, Guidon.
Miss Dare?
The vampire librarian’s high-pitched, exuberant voice sounded in her thoughts.
You understood, did you, about the tea? I have waited so long for you to talk to me. Since you left me, I have remembered more things—things in the books that I lost. Yes, my dear, the curse can be broken. But it will not be a simple thing to accomplish.
Tell me, Guidon
, she implored in her thoughts.
I will do anything to save Heath, to save all of us. I will tip the earth on its axis if I must.
No, Miss Dare. This will be more difficult. You must make Lord Blackmoor open his heart to love.
Both my daughter and I told him we loved him. But his wounds aren’t healing; it didn’t change anything.
It won’t work, Miss Dare, until his heart is open.
She knew what Guidon meant. They had told Heath they loved him, but his heart was still closed.
21
T
he last thing he remembered was Nikolai slamming a ball of light into him to knock him out. Pain lanced Heath’s head as he came back into consciousness. His arms were pulled behind him, his legs stretched apart, and all four of his limbs were chained to heavy metal brackets secured to the wall.
Soft rays of light, flushed pink with the dawn, spilled in through the windows of the bedchamber. In an hour, or less, the light would fall on him, burning him to a crisp….
Roses.
The sweet scent of them drifted to Heath. Blearily he took in the sight of feminine bare feet. Black silk shimmered over those feet. The silk rustled and a woman’s body came into view as she crouched down to him. Soft hands cradled his jaw, smooth and velvety like flower petals. “What in heaven’s name did that monster do to you? Your entire face is a mess of bruises. And you are so weak.”
It was Vivi. He knew it. Even though his eyes were failing and he saw only a blurry form. “Vivienne, are you all right?
What has he done to—?” The words died in his throat. “Hell, why are you here?”
The black silk robe slid off her right shoulder, revealing smooth, creamy skin. He glimpsed the deep, tempting valley between her breasts as she got up on her knees in front of him. His breath sucked in hard and sharp.
“He wants me to seduce you,” she said softly, in a voice guaranteed to seduce a stone gargoyle. “If I do not, he will kill Sarah.”
“Hell and the devil, I’ll rip that bastard apart.” With her daughter’s life in danger, Vivi would not want sex. To force her into a seduction was sadistic and cruel, especially since she had been forced to serve men for so long. He knew what Nikolai wanted and why the monster was using Sarah as a hostage. His sire knew Heath would do anything to save Sarah—including sleep with Vivienne and unleash the demon. And the anger burning inside him at Nikolai would explode when he transformed. It would turn him into the brutal, mindless killer his sire needed.
Black silk pooled around Vivi as she slumped to her bottom in front of him. “I have the key to unlock you. Nikolai believed it would be easier for us to make love if you were free.” Her soft-as-sin voice filled with bitterness. “He thought letting us use the bed would be more … conducive.”
The chains securing his arms rattled. These were not ordinary shackles; he could have easily broken regular iron cuffs. Vivienne fished the key, which hung on a chain between her breasts, and his cock stood up in his dirty trousers so fast, it slapped him in the gut. A soft click sounded, then the shackles dropped away. “I remember locking you up in my carriage, Vivi. Against your will. I’m sorry, love.”
She shook her head. “Don’t be sorry. I wouldn’t have thought to ask you to tie me up, if you hadn’t done that.”
He gave her a wry smile as he flexed his hand. Vivi was his
sun. Hot, glowing, beautiful. He’d done what he’d hoped to do: opened her to her innate sexuality. He was so furious Nikolai was forcing her to do this, for making sex such a frightening, heartbreaking thing for her.
“I promise you, Vivienne, Sarah will be safe.”
“I don’t think he will hurt her as long as I do what he says. Or at least, until I do what he says. After that … I don’t know what he plans to do with Sarah and me. He truly is a monster, Heath. There is so much I must tell you.” She leaned over him to fit the key into the shackle on his other wrist. Her breasts brushed his chest, and her puckered nipple drew a line of sizzling awareness across his skin, even through his shirt.
She crouched and released his ankles. His boots were gone. The sunlight seemed to try to nip at her bottom as she bent. Once the cuffs fell free of his ankles he scooped her up and carried her to the bed.
“We’re really going to … do it?” she whispered.
“We have to. I’ll make it … easy for you.”
“You are going to sacrifice yourself, aren’t you? And I don’t want it easy.” She undid the belt at her waist. And the robe slithered off the crests of her breasts, to fall to her sides and frame her. She was displayed for him: rounded bosom, slim waist, a generous flare of hips. “You don’t have to give up. I believe you can break the curse.” She explained swiftly what Guidon had said.
“He said you’ve accepted the curse. I think …” She put her hand to her mouth, as though stopping words from breaking free. “Oh hell, I will be blunt with you, Heath. I think you have let the curse control you because it’s protected you from love. You are afraid to love again. You don’t feel you deserve love. Well, the truth is, Heath, you do not get to chose who loves you. It is what you do that makes people care about you. Sarah and I love you, whether you accept that love or not.”
“I don’t—”
He broke off as she wrapped her hand around his cock, which pointed hopefully toward her soft, golden nether curls.
“I’m sorry, love,” he admitted as she felt how rigid he was. “I know you must be terrified, and I have no right to be aroused. But you do that to me. With your every smile. And with every breath I take near you, every breath that smells of roses and silk and you.”
“I believe if you can want love enough, you can break Nikolai’s curse. You have to be willing to open your heart.” As she spoke, her hands pulled at his shirt.
“No, love. I can do this faster.” Given his shirt was in tatters, it proved easy to rip apart. He skimmed his trousers down as quickly. When would the transformation begin? He didn’t know. All he knew was he had run out of time.
He rolled over Vivi, bracing himself on his arms. It broke his heart to see how beautiful she was, her eyes shining with hope. He bent and nuzzled her breasts lightly.
“If I can’t break the curse,” he said huskily, “you have to destroy me.”
“Nikolai said you would be indestructible.”
“Not possible. Every demon has an Achilles’ heel. Ask Guidon and he will tell you mine.”
But she shook her head. “There is no need. We will break the curse.”
He wanted to. But how could it be possible to do so, just by accepting Vivi’s love? He wanted her love. Shouldn’t the curse be destroyed then? He licked her breasts.
Exquisite
, he growled in his thoughts, sending the word to her.
She smiled softly.
Every night, I want you to do this. To kiss my breasts.
She wanted to speak of the future. He fought a spike of fear. He remembered how he used to find breasts, all women’s breasts, so tempting. But now only Vivi’s interested him. Her
pert, soft tits were the most tempting of all.
I promise to kiss your breasts, my queen. In fact, if I work very diligently, I think I can make you come, just by sucking your nipples
.
Her blue eyes went saucer wide.
I don’t think I could—
Relax then, Flower. And let me play.
He licked, laved, flicked, and stroked her nipples. He followed with tweaks, tugs, a teasing nip with his teeth. Then he became serious about his task. He sucked her right nipple and tweaked the nipple of her left. Then he used his vampiric speed to move from nipple to nipple, sucking hard.
She arched beneath him. She clutched at the sheets. Tugged. Ripped them free of the mattress. Bucked fiercely on the bed. And finally let out a wild scream.
Heat blossomed inside him, a fiery warmth that felt like flames licking at his heart. It could be love—or it could be the beginning of his transformation. For the first time in so very long, he might be feeling love, but he couldn’t be sure; he couldn’t savor it. And he damned Nikolai for stealing that from him.
Forget the curse, idiot, he told himself. Forget everything but Vivi. Forget everything but love.
Panting, she fell back, and she smiled at him, beaming at him like the sun.
Heath
, she whispered in her thoughts,
You did make me come. I shall never doubt you again.
But a voice rumbled up inside his head, a dark, bitter one from his past. A voice that always flayed him with accusations and cold, biting words.
Careless. Irresponsible. Damn fool
. These were the words his father had thrown at him when he was young because his proud, arrogant father had been infuriated by Heath’s interest in flora and fauna. It was damn unseemly for the heir to an earldom to go around digging up plants and making sketches in a journal.
“What sort of fool of a
boy chases butterflies around a meadow?” his father yelled. “What sort of boy presses flowers in a book? Goddamn, you will turn into a bloody sodomite.”
He had quivered in shame. Even when he’d become the earl, he’d been driven to escape the humiliation and hurt his father had heaped on him, by becoming famous for his books and his studies. He’d had a chip on his shoulder large enough to sink a sailing ship. And poor Ariadne and Meredith had suffered for his stubborn determination to prove his worth to a dead man.
Given all the mistakes he had made, how could he open his heart?
Just try
, Vivienne murmured in his thoughts. As though she could read his mind. But he knew, from the faith still gleaming in her eyes, that she had not read his mind, she just knew what he was thinking.
Whether he’d intended it or not, he had fallen in love with Vivi. More than that, he had let her into his heart. He had already done what he had feared the most. When he’d bitten her, he was sure he’d finally pushed her away, lost her. But Vivi was too strong for him. Instead of leaving him, instead of hating and fearing him, she had pulled him back from his selfish grief. She’d offered her love.
“I love you, Vivi.” He said it out loud so he could hear it ring out in the bedroom. Even though they were alone on the bed, he’d shouted it out, to ensure the world could hear. “I love you, my angel, my goddess. My light.”
I love you, too, Heath
. She wriggled against him. At once, he was even harder, and blood surged into his cock, making him rigid as a maypole.
Vivi’s trusting smile was like a source of flame, illuminating his past. He’d been afraid Ariadne would mock him as his father had done. He’d been afraid of failing her and Meredith. So he had run away, pretending he was doing it to prove himself. He would never run away again.