All sorts of thoughts jumbled in her suddenly tired, confused head.
Yannick.
How strange that
she thought of him by his Christian name. Only hours before he had been, in her mind, a lofty earl or an evil vampire. A stranger but not a stranger. And now he had tasted her in places she had never even dared touch.
If she slept, what would she dream? About Yannick and the other man again?
That snapped her wide awake. She opened her eyes.
He was leaning over her, smiling down at her as he smoothed her hair. With the other hand, he cupped her waist, letting his thumb stroke the underside of her breast
“Before you go,” she whispered, “Can you tell me what happened to you and your brother?
Why you were imprisoned and how it happened?”
The second brother of the
Demon Twins
. Was he the other man from her dreams?
Yannick’s
brother
?
Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 31
His brow lifted in surprise but she sensed him shut off other emotions from her. “Your father never explained our story?”
“No.”
He sat up, lifting his hands from her. Althea felt bereft to have his heat leave. She wanted to reach out and touch him one more time—put her hand on his bare back, or caress his big, naked shoulder, but stopped herself.
I will come to you tomorrow night, Althea, and tell you everything.
He stood up from the bed, standing in the moonlight, which seemed more ethereal now, fainter and less distinct.
Tomorrow night might be too late.
But he bowed and stepped back into the gloom, which was gray, not black, as dawn touched the sky.
Tomorrow. Let me explain all tomorrow. But do not let your father open the crypt.
Guilt burned through her and she looked down. She would have to help her father. It was what she had always done.
And she shouldn’t trust Yannick so easily. Shouldn’t let seduction convince her to throw aside all she had learned. Over a decade, she had seen what vampires were.
He is unlike any other vampire,
her inner voice whispered
. He controlled his bloodlust with
you. He saved your father. He is different.
No. She couldn’t fall under a vampire’s erotic spell.
Althea, my love.
She stilled as his deep, beautiful voice called to her. Was this what the dreams meant?
Love
? She couldn’t fall in love with him. She
couldn’t
.
And what about the last dream? She couldn’t love
two
vampires!
Althea looked up to find Yannick watching her. His brows were drawn together, his mouth turned down at the corners.
“I will wait for you tomorrow,” she promised. “We won’t open the crypt.”
His lips lifted. Before she could blink, he vanished. She felt the faintest stirring of the air.
The beat of wings. They fluttered over her hand like a caress—as though he was bestowing one last chivalrous kiss.
And then she was alone.
Althea crossed to the open window, shivering as the damp breeze flitted over her naked body. The sky had lightened. Deep purple splashed over the black, glowing with the soft sheen that promised daybreak.
Dawn was so close.
She prayed Yannick found safety.
Yannick closed the lid, crossed his arms over his chest. Her taste lingered on his lips. Her rich scent was on his face, on his fingers, on his slumbering cock.
What
did
the dreams mean? He had never dreamed about any other woman this way. And since becoming a vampire, he had never visited a woman without drinking from her. Nor had he Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 32
visited any woman more than once.
Fortunately, he had found a maid beginning her day before daylight and had drunk from her.
She’d offered him her tits and quim first, but he’d politely declined. He’d left her weak but healthy, with no memory of his bite, and had gone to where his box waited, placed as per his instructions.
Yannick closed his eyes. Drifted into sleep, still oddly conscious. He was even sure his eyes were actually open, yet the scene played out before him.
“Can you imagine both our mouths on you, love?”
He stood behind Althea, his hands on her slim shoulders. She wore a thin, almost
translucent chemise. It fluttered with her quick breaths. Her hard nipples poked against the
fabric.
He could smell her lovely feminine skin, could taste it as he bent his lips to her neck.
“Can you imagine my hands and his worshipping you?”
What was this? Bastien lay on the bed, grinning as he reached for the buttons of his bulging
breeches.
He was to share Althea with Bastien?
Not this time. Not this woman.
But as the dream played out, he felt himself harden, the erection stealing his fading energy.
Yannick tried to will it away but damn his unruly cock, it stood up defiantly. Hell and the devil,
it was a curse to sleep while aroused.
Even after all the women he’d shared with his brother, he watched in shock as Bastien
stripped naked and approached Althea. Then they caressed her together and all that mattered
was her pleasure.
But he’d never shared a woman that he—
Never a woman like Althea.
“Can you imagine the erotic pleasure of having both of us bite you?”
In the dream, his brother’s fangs launched out. Bastien leaned to her neck, Yannick gripped
his brother by the hair and yanked him back.
“Don’t you want to possess her?” Bastien demanded.
“No. I am not taking her from life. Not just for me.”
“For us.” His brother’s grin widened, arrogant and goading. “For both of us.”
His brother laughed and the dream exploded into a blinding white light, then faded into twinkling dust.
Bastien’s mocking laugh echoed in his head. Yannick fought to block it out.
Before Althea had come to him in his dreams, he’d planned to let his time run out and evaporate into dust. He hadn’t intended to use the incantation and release Bastien—once he was dead, Bastien would be freed anyway. Why in hell would he want to fight for his existence?
He’d hidden the truth for ten years—if he continued to exist he would have give up everything.
His title. His home. His country. People had begun to notice he never aged. His peers in London already joked that he’d sold his soul.
But to die now would be to leave Althea for Bastien.
Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 33
He would be dead, so why in hell would it matter if Bastien captured Althea’s heart?
Day sleep stole over Yannick, pulling him deeper into darkness. He willed his fingers to move. They responded slowly, several heartbeats after he sent the impulse.
He remembered the way Althea’s lashes had shielded her eyes. The way her wide green eyes had darted away as he walked nude into the moonlight. He had caught her expression of guilt. He’d attributed it to a virgin’s shyness after tumultuous sex.
Damn, it was because she was lying to him.
Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 34
Touch us, Althea. Stroke us both.
She was dreaming again. In the shadowy bedroom once more, she lay in the middle of the massive bed. Soft lamplight spilled over the crimson bed hangings, flitted along the fluted posts, and danced across her skin. She was naked, her hair loose and fanned over her bare breasts.
Althea kept her thighs pressed together and her hand rested demurely over her nether curls, hiding them.
An embroidered silk counterpane stretched beneath her, smooth and soft against her skin.
Yannick lay alongside her on the right. He levered up onto his shoulder and smiled down into her eyes as he stroked his knuckles along her cheek. Her nude vampire-warrior. His large erection parried against her thigh. His hair and eyes gleamed bright and silver-gold in the wavering light.
But the sensuous voice had come from her left.
Long golden hair tickled her lips and cheek. Firm male lips slanted over hers from the left while Yannick bent and licked her neck from the right. Yannick’s hands slid beneath her left breast and lingered over her heartbeat, but another man’s hand nudged his away.
Pleasure shivers tumbled down her spine as their hot mouths claimed both her mouth and her throat. Each man cupped a breast. She sensed the slight differences in their hands.
Yannick’s rougher, his brother’s smooth. Yannick’s fingers pinched and teased her nipple, but his brother turned caresses into pain—not enough to make her cry out and fight him, but enough to make her moan in sweet agony.
Althea gazed up into her second lover’s mirrored eyes, dark pools of heat and erotic knowledge. She knew he was Yannick’s brother, Sebastien de Wynter.
Fraternal twins, she thought, hazily, as his hands skimmed down toward her thighs. Though shadow cloaked them, she knew they were different in looks. Somehow she knew they would be different in the ways they would make love to her.
Stroke us both, Althea.
She longed to. Lust burned in her. She shifted her hips and the sensitive curves of her hipbones brushed against both their naked cocks.
No,
she whispered in her mind.
I…I can’t.
Sebastien’s laugh was low, wicked.
Sweetheart, don’t remain a prisoner of your goodness.
Enjoy yourself.
Yannick smiled at her again but his eyes flicked a warning to his brother.
She’s not yet ready, Bastien.
How could she hear words meant for his brother?
Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 35
Bastien spoke to her.
No one sins in a dream, sweetheart.
Was that true? She needed to believe it was.
Bold as brass, she reached down and curled her right hand around Yannick’s cock. Her brave action surprised her, and surprised Yannick more, judging by his throaty gasp. She clutched the familiar thickness of his shaft and let her fingertips stroke the velvety length to the firm, full head. Touching it made her wet and achy, made her heart pound in delight.
Just your touch makes me want to explode.
She felt the tension in Bastien as Yannick moaned.
Her left hand crept down. She wanted to pretend she did not control it. Her fingers danced over the very tip of Bastien’s cock. Touched his sticky wetness.
Yes.
His cock was different too. Slimmer—for her fingers met around the base of his. Longer?
She couldn’t be sure. A fuller head. She couldn’t resist peeking—first at Yannick’s and then at his brother’s. In the shadow, she couldn’t see much. Only that both were as individual as the men who possessed them and that both were beautiful.
Even in the gloom, she caught the expression on the twins’ faces. A trace of uncertainty. A worry that she might prefer one to the other? That one was better?
Both of you are perfect.
She tried to stroke them both at the same time, in the same way.
But she couldn’t. She reached the taut head of Bastien’s cock first, and squeezed tight. His head dropped back, his lids plunged down to shield his glowing eyes.
Oh, yes, angel. You’re going to make me come.
Come. The word they used for pleasure.
Cupping the firm, wet, hot head of Yannick’s cock, she squeezed them both. Two hungry male moans echoed through the room. Echoed through her head, her heart, her quim.
She stroked faster. Clumsily, but they didn’t seem to care. Yannick moaned. Deep, hoarse, almost desperate. Bastien panted over and over.
Fuck, fuck, yes, fuck me
. They kissed her lips, cheeks, the rims of her ears, the length of her throat with their mouths wide open. As though they starved for her.
Yannick’s cock swelled first, growing so thick and large, she could barely drag her fingers along it. His hips bucked forward, his head bowed, and he cried out. Breathtakingly vulnerable.
White, hot come shot out across her hand.
You always did lose control first
, Bastien crowed, then he cried her name and came too.
“London?”
Althea stared at her father in astonishment. Their carriage swayed as it lurched up the hill to the churchyard and the case on her lap slid across her knees. She tightened her grip on the handle. She didn’t dare let it fall.
Seated across from her, with the view ahead, Father leaned on his walking stick.
“Yes, missy, London. It’s too dangerous for you here, lass. And you deserve the excitement of London.”
The excitement of
London
? How could London compare to the adventure of hunting Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 36
Zayan?
And the adventure of bedding two men,
whispered her naughty internal voice. “What excitement?”
“You are a young lady. Balls. Dancing. Gentlemen. The sort of things that young women fancy.” His blue eyes twinkled behind his spectacles.
“But I don’t fancy them. I am doing exactly what I wish to do.”
“Your mother would have wanted to see you do those things.”
Oh no, he couldn’t make her feel guilt that way—she didn’t know what Mother would have wanted. Three when her mother had died in childbed with her second child, Althea could barely remember her. The only portraits stayed at Kenworth House, their English home that she rarely saw. Only a tiny miniature was with her to remind her of Mother’s vivacious smile, her vibrant auburn hair, her lively green eyes, and the love and joy she radiated.