In answer, pain sliced through his skull. Excruciating. He sank to his knees, pain slashing at his body. By the gods, he would drive a stake in his own heart to be free of this.
But he never would be.
He knew it meant the answer was no. The red power would not give him his children back unless he continued to serve. To see his children again, to give them another chance at life, he would have to be a slave.
Mayfair, London
May 1807
She was quite certain she was dying.
To take on the vampire Zayan had been foolish. The impetuous choice of a woman determined to prove she was as tough, resourceful, and fearless as any man. And she had been, Eugenia Bond thought. The vampire had just been stronger.
Zayan had not even been the one to wound her. She had been completely foolhardly. When Zayan had retreated from her, she’d triumphantly believed she could destroy him. She’d BLOOD DEEP / 7
surged forward with her stake and another vampire, one named Guillaime, had come out of the shadows of Hyde Park, had wrenched her sharpened bit of wood from her hand, and had attacked her with it.
Just remembering the pain made her weak.
Eugenia stumbled along the streets of Mayfair, keeping to the shadows, seeking one house alone for refuge. Her brother would understand what had happened to her. He would be angry, but he would accept her into his home. She did not know how she could keep moving forward, given her wounds. But she had to. To stop would be to die.
Blood had soaked her gown and was dripping down her arms and legs. She was pulling herself along, clinging to wrought-iron gates and lampposts when she needed support.
Her brother’s house was so close. Only another block.
But there must be footpads in the shadows waiting for drunken gentlemen to rob. Would they come out for her?
Coaches clattered by, and several were stopped outside other mansions to unload passengers. Voices milled everywhere. Horses whinnied and shied. Coachlamps and lights at gateposts threw a brilliant flickering glow onto the street. It was a public, crowded place for a vampire to pursue her.
It was not Zayan who was following her, but some younger, lesser vampire who might be stupid enough to let himself be seen.
There. She heard them—stealthy footsteps behind her. She didn’t have the strength to turn. All she could do was throw her fear into a headlong plunge forward. The steps sped up behind her into a run.
Thank heaven for the crowd. Even though the dimwitted members of the ton merely gasped in shock at her and stepped back to give her room, it meant her vampire attacker would not spring in front of so many witnesses.
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Number 16. Just the sight of the front door and its lion’s head knocker made her want to cry in relief. She stumbled up the steps.
“Madam!” cried a young footman in shock as he opened the door, and she promptly fell against him.
“Footpads,” she gasped, for his benefit, and that of the servants hurrying forth. Her pompous brother Edward would not want it to be made public that his sister was a vampire hunter.
Edward thought her mad. It was only because he knew that vampires were not myth but reality that he had not already locked her into Bedlam.
Boots thundered across the tile floor. She had sagged on her back against the wall, clutching her side. Icy cold swept over her, and her fingers were numb. Dimly, she saw Edward’s face.
Instead of being livid with fury, he was anguished with fear.
“Eugenia. Dear God, what have you done?”
Engineered my own death.
She thought the words but couldn’t say them. Her strength evaporated then, and the cold claimed her.
She slithered to the ground.
A brilliant light shone upon her, welcoming her, embracing her. In her mind, Eugenia reached out to it. It promised refuge from the cold. It was beautiful to behold, flooding out fear and uncertainty.
“Aunt Eugenia?”
She heard a child’s voice from far away.
“Don’t die, Aunt!” the girl cried.
Eugenia felt a pressure on her chest. The weight of a young girl’s head.
I have no choice,
she wanted to say.
It is my time to
go. This battle, I’ve lost.
But warmth flooded through her, a heat that took on a greater strength and made the bright, beckoning light fade away. Eugenia BLOOD DEEP / 9
was pulled backward, pulled down to the bed on which her body lay, and she slammed back into herself with a jolt.
She forced her eyelids up and saw a girl standing at her bedside.
Miranda. The child was twelve, her golden hair still caught up in braids that did not tame the tempestuous curl. Her skirts skimmed below her knee. The child blinked rapidly, her blue eyes glistening, and tears streaked her cheeks. “Are you . . . all right, Aunt Eugenia? I felt the heat. You aren’t going to die now, are you?”
Good heavens, the girl had brought her back to life. She was weak still and could not sit up, but Eugenia felt the beat of her heart grow stronger and faster.
Her niece had pulled her back from the afterlife, and had, well, resurrected her.
She had encountered such strong magic only once before—
in the vampire Zayan.
Exhausted by the ordeal of saving her aunt’s life, Miranda collapsed at Eugenia’s side. Weakly, Eugenia embraced the slim, shaking girl, and she whispered soothing words until Miranda stopped trembling.
“I don’t know what I did,” Miranda whispered against Eugenia’s bosom.
“You saved my life,” Eugenia answered softly. “You were a brave and wonderful girl. You are very special, my dear.”
She tried to make it sound simple and matter-of-fact for the child, but Eugenia knew it was anything but. Her niece possessed magic that made demons and vampires look like fumbling amateur mesmerists.
Now she knew what her mission must be. What would happen to Miranda as her dear niece grew up with this astonishing magical power? She might belong to the Royal Society for the Investigation of Mysterious Phenomena, but Eugenia knew ex10 /
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actly what the
men
of the Royal Society would want to do—either destroy Miranda or hold her captive to study her. The girl needed to be protected from that. Miranda would need a great deal of help. She must learn to fit into society while keeping this power a secret. And Eugenia knew how great and dangerous a task that was.
“Dear sweet girl,” Eugenia whispered, stroking her niece’s slender back, “I will take care of you. Always.”
1
Captured
From the diary of Miss Miranda Bond
1 March, 1819
There is nothing more exasperating than the sound of a
woman in pleasure if that woman is not you and there is
very little hope that the woman will ever be you.
It is said, I think, that momentous journeys begin with
the smallest impetus. . . . Well, perhaps it has been said only
by me, but it sounds very well, so I shall use it as my motto,
my mantra, my slogan for the campaign I am about to embark upon.
That cry of pleasure was my impetus.
To save my debt-ridden family, I will race to the
windswept moors—to the estate of the mysterious and notorious Lord Blackthorne. Rumors of his strange, erotic
tastes abound, but I believe not one of those salacious tales
is true. Blackthorne saved my brother’s life on the bloody
battlefield of Waterloo, and I know him to be a true hero.
It is more than the necessity of saving my family. From
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the letters we have exchanged for a precious, glorious year
now, I know I love him.
So I must go to him, seduce him, and marry him.
Assuming I do not get lost, robbed, or murdered on the
way . . . .
15 March, 1819
“I want to plunge deep inside you, angel. I want to make you scream.”
Miranda shut her eyes and felt a shiver of anticipation tumble from her bare nape to her low back. He was here, again, hidden in the shadows behind her. His voice was purely erotic—the sound of it low and deep, rich and sexual. Completely male—
both lusty and unapologetic.
It isn’t real. It is a dream, Miranda,
her inner thoughts warned.
How could she know that? She was part of the dream—lost in it—but somehow she knew it was just a fantasy, and that if she forced her eyes to open, this exquisite moment would disappear.
His large hand settled on her neck. Skin-to-skin. No gloves.
She was feeling a slightly roughened, long-fingered gentleman’s palm caressing her nape.
To have a man’s bare hand touch her flesh? It was exotic.
Forbidden. Fire sizzled down her spine.
Miranda arched her back and daringly pressed her derriere against the man standing behind her.
Proper ladies did not do such things.
But the whole point was she could not be a proper lady anymore.
Tall. She knew he was tall. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense his head above hers. His long hair hung loose, and silky BLOOD DEEP / 13
strands teased her skin above her bodice. She couldn’t hear him breathe, and when he didn’t speak, there was no sound at all.
She was staring into a cheval mirror, seeing nothing but her own reflection and the darkness surrounding her. She could never see him at first. Slowly, her dream world would reveal him to her.
His finger lazily drew circles on the back of her neck. “Do you want me deep in you, angel?” His voice held a wry, teasing note. “I can’t enter you—unless you tell me ‘yes.’ ”
Something hard—and thick—poked against her rump.
She knew what it was. Each night her dreams had become more daring. Last night, her last night spent in her own bed before leaving her home, she’d lost her virginity in her dream.
Not in reality, though. And in her dream world she had never seen the face of the man to whom she’d surrendered.
Was he Lord Blackthorne? Did she never see the man in her dreams because she had never seen Blackthorne?
Yet the scandalous, shocking, carnal things he did to her in her dreams felt so real.
Suddenly, her clothes fell away. The weight of gown and skirts simply dropped to the floor, though no hand had unfastened them. Her corset unlaced by itself, compelled by the magic in her dream.
“Y-yes.” She spoke on a tremble, her voice filled with passion, nerves, and frustration. “I want you inside.”
His hand skimmed along the round curve of her rump to cup the underside of her thigh. He coaxed her to raise her leg and perch her foot on a silk-cushioned stool. It opened her nether regions to his hands, and his fingers invaded.
She was so wet, drenched with juices.
“This is how I like you, angel. Slick and wet and open for me.”
He never used her name. But she was certain she knew his—
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that her fantasy was indeed Lawrence Adrian Phillip South-wick, the Earl of Blackthorne.
Miranda tensed, then moaned with delight as he opened her wider. All she could think of was his fingers: two inside her, spreading her open; then three—impossibly, he slid three fingers deep into her core, and flicked his thumb back and forth over the most sensitive spot at the junction of her nether lips.
“You belong to me, love.”
She did. From the moment she had opened his first letter, she had.
“You belong to me,” she said in return; though in her dreams, she took action more than she spoke. She did things like saucily turn to try to see him while she licked her lips. “And I want you deep.”
She couldn’t see him. Darkness slanted over his face. All she could see was his wide chest—all ridged muscle and hard nipples and rippling skin. Then he gripped her hair, yanked it free from her pins, wound the length of it around his wrist. Holding her like his captive, he surged into her.
It felt so good. Good enough to melt her like chocolate in the sun.
How she did scream. And, oh, but he did go deep. Right to her womb, and delicious agony spiraled through her. How could it feel so good when it made her sob and whimper and howl?
But the very exquisite agony of it was so . . . addictive.
He’d vowed to make her scream, and he did. With his hard thrusts, with the ruthless lunge of his groin against hers, with his low, ragged growls and the harsh rush of his breath against her ear. Her bottom slapped against him, her cheeks shimmering with each bounce. Her breasts danced in front of her—until he clasped them and tugged on her nipples, twisting them until she begged him to stop . . .
Then begged for more.
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“Come.” He said it as a command. She was at the precipice, wound up like a spring, like a keg of gunpowder awaiting the sizzle of the fuse. And on that word, she burst.
Sheer pleasure took command, and all she could do was surrender her body to the intense, wonderful wash of it. She cried out, cried out to heaven above, let her head fall forward and back, until she was dizzy with the ecstasy.
He held her through her wild dance, chuckling gently by her ear. Then the pulses of her wet quim began to ease and she could finally drag in a desperate breath. Sweat drenched her.
Something cold touched her skin.
Cool and sharp, something that felt like a knife’s blade ran along the side of her neck, from her jaw to the lobe of her ear.
Miranda froze in horror. It was not a knife. The flash of white in the mirror stole her breath.
Fangs lapped over Blackthorne’s lips. She could not see his mouth—it was too dark, but moonlight glimmered on his two long, curved teeth, like those on a wolf. It wasn’t possible.
But on some nights she had dreamed of demons chasing her; she’d imagined pounding feet and animal-like growls, and powerful hands reaching for her.
Oh God, she was sliding into one of those dreams. She shook helplessly. She didn’t want to dream of demons now. She wanted this luxurious erotic dream. For one night, she wanted to be free of fear.