Chapter 6 #3
Rigid with surprise as much as discomfort, Voss opened his eyes. He saw the woman, the crimson and golden room, the tall, pale candles flickering and casting delicate shadows. Blood trailed sleek against her white skin, still pooled hot in his mouth, the essence on his tongue.
Voss caught his breath, working through the sudden onslaught of pain to steady his breathing. To bring himself back here, where he could find release from what pounded through his veins.
The woman looked up at him, lust and laziness in her eyes as she reached for his shoulders, wanting to draw him back down. Her eyes weren’t right. They weren’t catlike, large enough; they weren’t shaped right. Her mouth…her face…no.
He couldn’t stop a quick glance toward the ceiling, knowing Angelica was there. Two floors above, safely ensconced here at Rubey’s, where no one would think to look for them. She was so very near, but the ceiling hung low and heavy and impenetrable.
He could send for her. Simple. Get it over with.
The pain of his Mark lessened slightly. He could breathe. Think. Why did she haunt him so?
“Voss,” the girl murmured. Her hand slid lower between them, between their hot, slick bodies. Her eyes were glazed, desperate. She licked her lips, shifted against him, closed her fingers more insistently.
He could do that to Angelica. He could make her cry and moan and want him like he wanted her. Like they all wanted him.
She could help him, and he…he could help her. And have her.
Show her the world of desire and passion.
She was two floors above. Unprotected. Virginal and waiting.
A rush of desire flooded him and Voss’s breathing deepened.
He could still smell her on his fingers from when they’d buried into her hair during their kiss.
He thought of how she would smell, close, naked and writhing against him.
Her breast heavy in his hand, her hair clinging to the damp of her skin.
Her eyes, heavy with desire after their kiss, rose in his mind. They beckoned, and then suddenly widened with horror and shock.
Fear.
He’d pulled back by now, enough that the sticky heat of body against body had lessened. Voss heard his own breathing in a room that had become nearly silent. It rasped unsteadily and he hated the weakness it portended.
The throb at the back of his shoulder pounded harder. Insistent. Go…go…go.
Take.
Take her.
Dull pain turned burning and sharp and reminded him that he had no reason for such deprivation. No reason to resist, to deny himself.
Nothing to fear.
Voss turned back to the woman. She would be easy, familiar relief.
But not Angelica.
The blaze of pain over his shoulder shocked him and Voss gasped. Luce’s dark soul. The devil wanted him to do it. To take her.
Angelica.
Not now, he told himself. And his Mark. Not yet. After I get what I need. After she does what I need.
Then he would take.
Ignoring the pain, driving it away, he lunged for the softness of the nameless woman, buried himself, his senses, his mind, in the moment as he had done so many times before.
Later, sometime much later, he woke, naked, amid twisted sheets stained with blood. He remembered, vaguely, the dark-haired woman. And the blonde after her and the other brunette. The desperate need, the thirst he’d tried to quench. Over and over.
Then…dark dreams he’d tried to avoid, the face of Brickbank. His impaled body. Even the wisp of his soul, spiraling away in the darkness. Horrifying.
Of Angelica, with her dusky rose skin and thick, sweet-smelling hair. Dark-eyed, tempting, begging.
And Lucifer.
Lucifer had been in his dreams.
Voss sat up, his head pounding as if he’d drunk a full bottle of blood whisky.
Bloody damned hell.
Lucifer had only visited him in his dreams once before. The night he’d come to offer his unholy bargain, the temptation of a lifetime.
Slender and dark of hair, bright blue of eyes, pointed of chin and jaw and angular of body, Lucifer wasn’t unpleasant to look at. But nor was looking upon him easy or comfortable. There was too much darkness behind those shocking, unworldly blue eyes.
Sunlight seeped from behind the heavy shutters and curtains in his room and Voss stared at the shape it cast. The last time he’d touched sunlight had been the morning after Lucifer’s nocturnal visit.
He hadn’t realized what it would do to him. He hadn’t realized the dream, the covenant, had been real.
He hadn’t been touched by a sunbeam since.
A cold chill settled over him. Why had Luce appeared in his dream tonight? To remind him of the unholy bargain they’d made?
He could remember nothing but the demon’s presence, his spectral face. Smiling that easy, smug smile that said he knew a man’s every desire. And that he could fulfill it in every way.
Voss’s legs felt weak, and when he moved to haul himself out of bed, the skin and muscle beneath his right shoulder protested with pain. As he turned, he saw his Mark in a mirror and paused…trapped by the sight.
Not like Dimitri’s, whose Mark was black and so thick and raised it seemed to visibly throb. But Voss’s was certainly more prominent than he’d ever seen it.
The ache was bearable, but insistent and penetrating. He moved his arm gingerly, then reached behind to touch the marks. Normally he felt no difference between the black, rootlike insignia and his flesh, but now there was a slight swelling and a bit of warmth there.
Voss turned from the reflection and rang for a bath. He wouldn’t go to Angelica sweaty and dirty from his night of blind pleasure.
But nor did he feel remorse for taking what he needed and craved. It was his right, his compulsion.
This was his compensation from Lucifer: never-ending, unrepentant self-indulgence.
He wouldn’t hurt Angelica; he wasn’t like Cezar Moldavi, who caused pain simply for the sake of it, as a revenge for all of the pain inflicted on him during his mortal years.
No, he wouldn’t hurt Angelica. But he would have her.
And he wouldn’t wait much longer.
Dimitri was tired and annoyed. Not particularly in that order. Definitely not in that order.
In fact, annoyed wasn’t a strong enough word for how he was feeling. Livid. That was it.
He glared down at the figure standing between him and his only chance for a scrap of relief.
No. He didn’t feel annoyed. Or even livid.
He felt murderous.
“What is it, Miss Woodmore?” he asked. It was clear the eldest of his new charges wasn’t going to allow him to pass to his study unless she spoke to him. And, from the looks of her stubborn expression, at great length.
She had obviously found the time to change from last night’s appalling Egyptian queen costume, and, presumably, to rest a bit.
At least, that was what her maid had reported, via Dimitri’s valet.
Once assured Angelica was not only safe, but would be returning to Blackmont Hall later that morning, Miss Woodmore had felt able to take a bit of repose.
Perhaps even a bath, if the spicy floral scent emanating from her hair was any indication.
But Dimitri had spent the last hours of the night and well into the day (for it was now several hours past noon) attending to everything from Belial and his footpads—and their vain attempt to breach Blackmont Hall—to ensuring the real story of what happened at the masquerade ball was obscured and stifled.
A few hints dropped about a bit of playacting at the masquerade gone awry, a few twists of facts into something believable along with the altering of a number of stubborn memories, and several visits to men’s clubs to blank out more memories—and all was taken care of.
And now here stood Miss Woodmore, fresh-faced and accusing.
“It’s nearly four o’clock, Corvindale. I would like you to tell me precisely where Angelica is,” she announced. “And when she is going to arrive here. But most of all, I require assurance that she is safe.”
How could this slip of a woman who smelled like spicy flowers manage to fill the entire corridor? He hadn’t a prayer of brushing past and ignoring her insulting insinuations.
No, Miss Woodmore would not be ignored.
“Your sister will return to Blackmont Hall when I am convinced it is safe for her to do so,” he told Miss Woodmore. That is, when he located the chit and her abductor.
He steeled himself against the rush of anger. He had a variety of reasons for disliking and mistrusting Voss. But now he had reason to kill the man.
Lucifer be damned.
The irony of that thought was not lost on him, but Dimitri had no inclination toward amusement at the moment. He had too many distractions to which he must attend, not to mention he expected Giordan Cale to arrive at any moment.
“Is that all?” he asked, managing to keep the hope from his voice.
She lifted her pointed little chin and gave him a definite glare. “No, it is not. In fact, I wished to speak with you in regard to your conduct last evening.”
He realized with a start she was taller than he’d realized, her head nearly reaching to his chin.
“My conduct?” Dimitri was fully aware that the tone of his voice was such that a less insistent individual would turn tail and run. His head had begun to pound and, on top of that, he noticed a shaft of sunlight pouring into the corridor beyond. Someone had uncovered the windows, blast it.
“Not only was it abhorrent and crude, but you didn’t even take the moment to explain or apologize before shoving Mirabella and myself into a carriage and sending us off.”
“Indeed.”
“There was simply no reason for you to put your hands on me”—her voice dipped a bit as if she were infuriated or overcome—“and toss me out onto the balcony like some sort of—”
“In fact, I had sufficient reason for doing so. The least of which was the fact that you would not have obeyed me.”
“If you had simply explained—”