CHAPTER NINETEEN
SEBASTIAN
“Perhaps if you are gentler with her, she’ll be nicer during the daylight hours.”
I blinked as Charleton straightened my cravat and stare down at the bald patch on the top of his head. “I beg your pardon?”
He looked up at me, his face guileless as a newborn babe’s. “Nothing, my lord.”
I snarled, wrapping my hand around his throat as I pressed his back to the wall across the room in less than the time it took my valet to fill his mortal lungs.
“ Say that again .”
Charleton looked down at me, his slippered feet dangling a good foot above the plush bedroom carpet, and shook his head. “No thank you, my lord,” he said, politely.
“Damn servants can’t even be threatened,” I snapped, letting him down.
Charleton straightened his jacket and returned to his duties of fluffing my cravat, albeit across the room from where he started. “It’s a time of stress, sir. We all feel it.”
Her most of all.
I didn’t need to delve into his mind to hear the thought that rolls around my room.
“Thank you, Charleton. For all you do for us both. Is she…struggling?” I hesitate, needing to ask more, but unsure how much to give away of what I fear for Gella.
Charleton worked in silence, flicking invisible pieces of lint from my collar. “She manages, my lord. As any wife in her situation does.”
“That’s not an answer.” There are no others like hers.
Our surface conversation floundered as he looked up and held my gaze in full for acknowledging the impossibility of the situation.
“Gisella lacks…love. She has no family to rely and calls servants her friends.” He held up a hand. “I know our household is unique. Your situation dictates it so. But she is not from your world, and is still new to it. Who does she turn to without you? A stone man while you converse in hear head, and take her sleeping hours?”
“I love her when I am able,” I growled.
Charleton dropped his hands as I stalked away. “Physical contact is no substitute for a full heart, my lord.” His sadness draped me, but by the time I turned back, an apology ready on my lips, he has turned away, collecting my nightclothes form the floor.
I strode along the hall, ready to find Gella and undo all the fine work Charleton just fixed.
“You’re worried she won’t come.” Dolion watched the young catfish circle the base of his fountain.
Gella had Charleton catch from the wriggling, precocious creatures at the jetty while I waited for the sun to see and see if my butler and valet still had all his limbs. The man survived, just, avoiding death and the snapping jaws of the reptilian brethren within the tepid bayou waters and filled the water feature with plenty of the juvenile fish that don’t seem to last particularly well. I frown as I count the population a third time, certain he brought back more than the current complement.
“Of course I am. She’s far from stupid.” I ground my teeth. Gella wanted to tempt Amy into the open, but I knew better than to bring the demoness to my home. Sorceress. Whatever the witch wanted to be called. “She’ll see straight through the ruse the moment she arrives, if she hasn’t already. It’s not like she doesn’t believe that my wife has connected all the hints she’s laid out.”
“Truth be told, I’ll be glad when this is over.” Dolion sighed, staring across the yard to where Minette helped Gella play quoits in the darkness, their path lit by a circle of lanterns.
The affair looked less like a morning game held after dinner than a séance, but my wife insisted on sleeping and waking the same hours as I did.
“Is my bellyaching so great?” I looked at him sharply. “When are you going to confess to diddling my maid?”
Dolion’s stone fa?ade creased. “Do you have to be so…colonial?”
“We live in the new world,” I reminded him, though my heart panged. The thought of returning to France occurred to me, taking Gella back but…I wasn’t welcome there any more than I was here, in this country with its new superstitions and old gods.
“We do,” he sighed. “I miss haunting the buildings, Sebastian. Staring down at ancient, cobbled streets, the partygoers trampling filth beneath their heeled shoes. Glorious carriages and pretty women squealing at my hideousness.”
I snorted. “You should be a poet, not a gargoyle.”
He barely looked my way, his gaze intent on Minette who takes her turn and misses their goal by a mile. “Is there a reason I cannot be both?”
Breath escaped me. “Be what you like, my friend. We have all the time in the world.”
His answer was less than an enigmatic smile as he stretched forward, breaking through his stone-skin, and scooped one of the young catfish from the waters around him. A swallow, and the creature was gone.
“Delicious. Please have your man deliver more.” He leapt off his pedestal, his clawed feet becoming more human, but not fully, as he strode toward the women who greeted him as an old friend while he played court games with them in an untried land at midnight.
My fingers itched at my side as I slowly joined them, Gella’s mind brushing mine.
You’re grumpy tonight, my lord.
I snarled softly inside her mind. Since when do we use titles, my wife?
Since you looked at me like I was the last thing on your mind.
Her eyes glowed bottomless in the flickering lantern lights.
I smirked, catching her waist. Feeling left out? Her shove told me I rectified that error as I wound my arms around her frail frame. So breakable.
Fragile.
Her fingers traced across my stomach over my shirt in an intimate gesture that, anywhere else, would be frowned upon, socially. Here, we had forgotten the rules of society and lived amongst our own. A pity that soon we would have to remember them all again.
My mind brushed hers as she settled against me. Don’t get comfortable, Gella. I have a fantasy I want to play out with you.
Taking inspiration from our bayou witch, I concentrated, pushing my words along with the image of her pale feet fleeing through the maze, bare as her breath pants between pale lips. Her pulse rode hard under my fingers when I stroked her throat and I knew she got the message.
“When?” she breathed.
I looked beyond the darkness. “I’ll count.”
“To what?”
“I’m not sure yet.” I smiled when Dolion turned a quizzical glance my way and spoke directly into the most intimate part of her mind.
Run, Gella.
She leaned into me a second longer before her shoes slipped off and she pattered away on bare feet. One, two, three…
Don’t go too fast. Her little huffs accentuated her dilemma.
Stay, and see if my threat is good. Run, and find out how fast I can catch her.
Her internal debate might have been cute how she seemed to think sassing me would get her out of trouble, except that it won’t work .
Run faster, Gella.
The smile remained on my face as Dolion stared at me, turning Minette away despite her protests.
“Come, my love. I feel Sebastian and his precious woman want their time together now. And so should we, before the sun rises.” He nuzzled into her neck to the melody of her giggles, and I wondered if I need to have a chat about the birds and the stone bees with my gargoyle.
Then Gella’s ragged breaths distracted me, and my thoughts merged away from our friends as I hunted my wife like so much prey through the maze.
I’ll find you, Gella. Don’t bother hiding.
I hear her laughter, rather than experience in my head. I smile. She’s closer than I expected, probably planning on doubling back, the little minx. Smart creature she is. But sometimes clever is too clever.
Then stop cheating, she banters back, her voice drifting away.
Along with her presence.
I frown, heading for the center of the maze, toward the black poppies. “Gella,” I call aloud, remembering the abject fear that haunted her voice in my head the night she lost herself on these paths, and my inability to come to her. “Wait.”
The game quickly turned on me. I spun in a circle, focusing on her humanity, her mortal frailty that would draw not only a hunter like myself to her this night but any other in the vicinity.
This was a terrible idea.
I rounded the corner of the tallest walls, their hedges overgrown, reaching for me as I yanked at the wayward strands, pulling a hole in a section when I found myself penned in at a dead end, and no wife in sight.
“Gella!” my voice echoed through the still night.
“Here, Sebastian.”
I turned and there she stood, the single, pale form in a sliver of moonlight amongst shadows. Her dress pooled the ground at her feet as she stepped hesitantly from the muddle of material. Her hair hung long over her shoulders, unpinned. Those damned devices scattered the ground beneath her feet where she ripped them out, trailing the area. I’d be picking them out of my garden for weeks to come, but I didn’t care.
Gisella stared up at me, her skin silvery, pristine beneath the moon’s sensual kiss. Her shoulders dropped back, lifting her breasts, their heavy swell rising with each sharp breath. Dusky nipples tightened beneath my gaze, and her breath wasn’t the only labored.
My need roses with her proximity. I forced myself to still. “Run, Gella,” I whispered, so brief the night air sucks my words away. I bared my teeth and her eyes widened, fear edging in as she rocked backward, then she was gone.
But not far enough. Never far enough to escape me.
I slunk into the shadows, my panic of finding her reduced as my arousal scented hers. She might as well be dripping for all the traces she left. I let her run on, turning herself in frantic circles until she stumbled back into a path she’s already used.
One I remained in, waiting.
“Sebastian,” she gasped, tripping over her toes.
Her hand came up to cover her body, but I snarled, lunging in front of her in a breath, knocking her cover away.
“You will never hide from me.” I dug my nails painfully into her hip, jerking her into my fully clothed body. Hells, she was as cold as alabaster. I licked a line along her cheek, tasting her tears, her fear. Her need. “Never cover yourself in front of me, unless I tell you so. This body. Who does it belong to?” I demanded.
“You,” she whispered, a final tear, a perfect, pear-shaped dew drop trembling on her upper lashes as she stared up at me, her frightened breaths coming so much harder as she wriggled in my grasp. “Let me go.”
Reminded of the catfish Dolion swallowed whole, I smile, letting my fangs lengthen past my lips. “I want to mark you, Gella. Something you’ll remember for a long time.”
“W-where?” she shivered when I don’t release her, backing her into a hedge taller than us both. Flagstones turn to sand beneath our feet, the positioning perfect.
“Here.” I traced her pulse beneath my thumb where her life flurried, both of us knowing I could end her in a moment. “Here.” I touched the top of her breast, skating my fingertips across the creamy, perfect skin. Not after tonight; she’d bear my marks forever. “Here.” I cupped my hand between her legs, thrusting two fingers inside her to coat them and smear the top of her thigh near her swollen flesh, right along the inside of the crease. “These are the places I’ll mark. And you’ll scream and cry and come like a wounded animal while I mark you and then fuck you until the sun rises.” I fixed her with a hard look. “And after tonight you will never, ever run from me again.”
She nodded, though her body trembles, anticipation, terror? I can’t tell. “Yes, my lord.”
I growled at her. “Use. My. Name.”
“Yes, Sebastian,” she murmured, bowing her head.
I forced her chin back and claimed her mouth, pushing her onto her knees as I kneeled before her, and found that pulse point. “Hold onto me,” I warned her. “This won’t be sweet, not to start.”
Her pulse flickered faster. Definitely fear. My breeches tightened as my cock roared to life. I tilted her head to the side, licking her flesh, and sank my teeth into her.
Warmth flooded my mouth, her sweet metallic tang coating my throat. I groaned as I gorged myself in a single mouthful, reminding myself I couldn’t drain her. Rearing back, I bit her again, tearing her skin as she sobbed above me, scoring my shoulders with her nails.
“Sebastian,” she gasped. “Stop!”
No. tonight you are mine, no longer someone else’s.
I smiled cruelly into her bloodied neck and bit her again.
And again, and again.
And when her screams of fear broke and I closed the wounds so she wouldn’t bleed out on me, I started on her breasts, turning pain to pleasure until she writhed, her legs open, welcoming my cock deep inside her. Those screams filled the maze, drenching the creatures who resided there that night in her scent, our scent.
Her body shook and trembled many times. The sun’s arrival warned me of the end of my night’s activities. I pressed my lips to her inner thigh, the last place I promised I’d mark, and bit deeply, bruising her skin in a way that would never heal fully while my seed oozed from her used body.
She moaned, thrashing weakly as she tangled her hands in my hair, riding the waves of pleasure from my bite.
“Pain, need, pleasure. The three things I offer in my bed, Gella. I never asked your permission to marry. I never gave you those promises myself. But I promise you this, now. While ever I exist and you roam this place I will protect you. Wear my marks and you are mine. I’ll give my immortal existence for you, Gella. Everything I am is yours. For you.” My voice cracked, and I returned to drinking, slower, savoring her.
I couldn’t take more without killing her, but I satisfied myself with licking the wound clean, then turning to her swollen flesh I bruised in a different way earlier and licked and sucked until she cried and screamed herself hoarse.
Then, before the sun crested above the horizon, I carried her into the house and pulled all the drapes closed, falling into a dreamless sleep with Gella curled in my arms.