CHAPTER THREE
SEBASTIAN
My new wife shied away from me like a skittish mare, but the defiance in her eyes defined her. Drew me to her, until I came within an inch of throwing off my cloak and unmasking myself before her. Claim her there on the drive, be damned what any of my staff thought, or expected. This woman was mine .
In every way.
Not that she would forgive me for such an act, an intrusion without her permission, no matter how much I craved her the moment my dead skin touched hers. Fragile she might appear and feel beneath my hands, but her eyes flashed with a fierce independence far more attractive than any other quality she might possess.
The taste of her lingered in the night air, a flavor of innocence tainted already with the evils of this place.
Of myself, and the evils I carried with me across oceans, over unnatural lifetimes.
Cursing myself as a fantastical fool, I tossed the reins to the stableboy waiting in the shadows. My eyes weren’t the only ones that had followed my wife’s flight. I clipped the boy gently across the back of the head, a not-so-subtle reminder of his place, and mine.
The house’s silhouette lengthened with the night as I paced through the lower halls, ignoring the new presence above me while Charleton escorted her to her rooms. I couldn’t shake the feel of her where she clung to my tarnished soul, aching to rip him away from her and terrorize her in the bedroom set aside for her use. It wasn’t likely that we would spend that many hours together, considering my nocturnal custom, unless she was prepared to flip not only her French lower nobility life for me, but her sleeping habits too. I probed her mind gently, the faint scent of night jasmine and naivety lingering though we were a floor apart.
The corner of my lip curled. A virgin, as promised. How…sweet. I could have taken one of the courtesans offered, their souls already shredded, but some part of me wanted to have a slice of purity in this life, if only for a short period. My conversation with my local stone mason echoed through my mind.
“You’ll outlive her by an eon. Ten, a hundred. Will your immortal soul deal with her death after a lifetime of regrets?” His knowing eyes settled on mine, the sort of broken soul he spoke of reflected intimately there.
At the time it was all too easy to laugh off his romanticized notion. Now, I wondered there wasn’t more truth in his wisdom.
Gisella’s sharp opinions echoed inside my mind for a brief moment as she berated the valet silently before they flittered away, and I lost the connection. I smiled despite the pain clenching my chest, wishing it was air I breathed, and not her life I craved.
Desperation clawed at me to reclaim her, but now wasn’t the time to intrude further than I already had on her singular night of peace before she was thrown headfirst into my world. There would be time. An eternity of nothingness in which to discover her.
A dry laugh, less a polite sound than something from the bowels of hell itself, ripped from my throat. But even my solitary hours weren’t to be my own.
“My lord. You requested me upon your return.”
I stared across the small room I didn’t recall entering at the slip of a girl who stood before me, her hands clasped at waist height. “How old are you?”
“Six and ten. My lord,” she added. Her voice wobbled, though she made a valiant effort to keep it firm.
I swatted a hand at her. “I don’t remember you. Send me Elvira, or one of the girls I often use, please.”
I turned away, not watching her leave, and focused on the extra presence upstairs, near my rooms. Sixteen . For fuck’s sake. Charlton knew better. She might be considered an adult of serviceable age here or in France, but I refused to destroy an innocent girl on a whim because I couldn’t touch my wife.
My wife.
A depraved smile curled my lips. The girl squeaked, but my efforts weren’t for her. Gisella was the only innocent I wanted to ruin.
Going up her rooms tonight was the worst of plans. My hunger bore a hole in my gut that was never satisfied no matter how much I drank, like an addict with too many empty bottles seeking that next, and least effective, hit.
Perhaps that’s what Gisella would be for me. My newest addiction to cover the yawning void inside me where a soul once resided. Before a sorceress decided to experiment on a man who found beauty and worshipped that instead of understanding the creature it hid within.
That catastrophe was so long ago I barely remembered my humanity, and the ending of it the birthing into my monstrous side I’d use to rip every fraction of her innocence away.
Whether she wanted it or not.
“Sebastian.”
This time the voice was older, stained with a suggestive lilt. Any other night I would have welcomed the distraction, but tonight was a marking point for change.
I waved a hand without looking at her. “Elvira. Thank you for coming.” I kept my voice formal, my stance stiff. “I am hungry. Push your hair back.”
She didn’t step forward as I expected. “And my clothes?”
Still the lilt remained despite the disassociation in my stance. These humans never learn .
I’d been one, once, and look how that pitiful existence ended. Or rather, how it didn’t end. Never would. The irony tore a ruined laugh from my throat, and she took a step back, her seductive expression turning wary.
“Your clothes may stay where they are, on your form. I married tonight. I need to eat, and that is all.” I beckoned her, staring at a point above her head.
I didn’t need to persuade her to do what I wanted, or I’d risk warping her mind.
But I did take the time to brush my thoughts against Gisella’s and found her wandering the halls where she shouldn’t be. I smiled at the thought of discovering her in the darkest corners, wrapping my hands around her slim waist and pulling her into the shadows to play. My cock hardened, and Elvira perked up.
“So I am food?”
I didn’t need to look at her to see the pout of her generous lips reflected in her eyes, the way her lips curved up in temptation.
Fucking insatiable mortals don’t understand hunger.
However, it wasn’t the pretty serving girl that roiled my blood with need but the image of my wife in my arms, her head tipped back, soft, wine-stained lips pulsing with life that left me hard and straining against the fabric of my breeches.
“You are nothing more than a meal. Tonight is your last shift. After this you are free.” My command whiplashed through the silent lower floor so close to the servant’s quarters. I was certain they would hear our tiff, less of a lover’s quarrel than a master and employee’s impersonal dispute over time and pay, though I doubted she saw it that way. A job, and service rendered.
Good. Then they’ll understand my needs.
“My lord.” Elvira dropped to her knees at my feet, fretting like a mouse without a house.
My lips curled cruelly. “Head back. Like a good girl.”
Her whimper at my instruction, usually said in private when we were both divested of clothing, and me buried to the hilt inside her, was meaningless, and cold.
Heartless, like me.
I will tear her apart.
And she will love me for it.
The entire time I feasted I thought of Gisella. Her pale flesh torn apart beneath my hands, her bones fragile, brittle. Her life beating frantically against my tongue as I took her to the edge again and again.
And when I was done, a shell of a woman was left, one I barely recognized as my once lover, no longer my servant.
“She must leave this house tonight,” I murmured to the younger sister who could have taken her place earlier. Wide, white eyes stared at me, written with the fresh horror of a thousand nightmares yet to be had. “You, too. Charleton will compensate you both handsomely. Leave this place,” I repeated, stalking to the mineral rock pools the house was built over, needing to cleanse myself.
Purify, before I touched her.
I had a wife to terrorize.