The Vampire Dimitri

10 Of Weddings And Kisses

Narcise heard a noise.

Her first reaction was relief: Had Chas forgotten something and returned?

He’d only been gone a few hours—perhaps he’d been in London, still putting things in order and making preparations, and had come back. Or realized that he didn’t need to go after all. Perhaps they’d already rescued Angelica.

But that was a brief, initial reaction that soon fled.

She listened intently, the hair prickling at the base of her neck. Likely it had been a mouse or squirrel, knocking a little bit of rubble across the concrete floor. Or maybe it was the guard that Chas had arranged, or even Dimitri bringing her—

The slight scuff of a foot, so faint a mortal would never hear it, had Narcise slipping off the bed and reaching for her sabre. That was one good thing Cezar had done: taught her to fight with a blade. He’d allowed her to learn, likely as much for his own entertainment purposes—watching her duel with men who wanted to fuck her—as to give her a false sense of hope that it might be a useful skill in gaining her freedom someday.

In the end, it hadn’t. It had been Chas who’d freed her, not her own abilities—a fact which made her alternately furious and grateful.

Slipping the sword from its leather sheath, she turned on light feet and moved into the shadows.

The slender but lethal blade comforting in her hand, Narcise stood in a corner behind the doorway and wondered if she would be better served waiting for whoever it was to come in, or if she should rush through the door and meet them on her own terms. But she didn’t have the chance to make such a decision.

Just as the door opened, she scented him and whipped out from behind it.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, shoving the point of her blade up against Giordan’s chest. Just below the hollow of his throat.

“I have no bloody idea,” he replied. Eyes flashing, he grabbed the blade with his bare hand, yanking it away from his skin. It sliced along the inside of his palm and fingers, and immediately, his bloodscent permeated the air.

Narcise stepped back, allowing the sword to fall away, her heart pounding. Rich and warm and familiar, the essence of him filled her nose. Despite the loathing that settled like a stone in her belly, she couldn’t dismiss her body’s instant reaction: the blood in her own veins surged, her gums swelled, threatening to eject her incisors, and her mouth watered. Awareness prickled her. She swallowed hard.

“You did that purposely,” Narcise snapped, backing away.

Giordan’s expression was no less hostile. “As did you, my dear.”

She used a cloth to wipe his blood from her blade and shoved it back into its sheath. “I ask yet again—what are you doing here?” Then she shook her head. “Forget that. Just leave.”

“Nothing would please me more,” he replied. His eyes raked over her, making Narcise feel, for the first time in a long time, as if she were dirty and used. “But Woodmore sent me. He indicated there was something I was to retrieve. Now that I’ve arrived, I can only presume he meant you.”

“Certainly not,” she replied. “I’m to stay here—perfectly safe—until his return with Angelica.”

“And if he doesn’t return?” Giordan asked mildly. He’d walked over and picked up one of the blankets to wipe the cut on his hand.

“I’ll go to Dimitri. He’ll protect me.”

“I never thought of you as one who needs protection, Narcise. You take very good care of yourself.”

“Except when I’m locked away by my brother.”

Giordan looked at her. “Even then, you were formidable. In your own way.”

She turned away, dwelling on how much she hated him and not the waves of memory, familiarity and emotion that threatened to soften her. “I don’t know why Chas sent you here, but I’m not leaving. Especially with you. Just go.”

“You don’t know why he sent me here?” He gave a sharp laugh. “I certainly do. Here, where I could smell him all over you. Where I could scent both of you on the bed and against the wall and everywhere else. The entire place reeks of you two, together. That, my dear, is why he sent me here.”

Narcise turned back, all casualness. “Then why prolong the agony, Giordan? There’s no reason for you to stay and stew in your jealousy.” Her heart thumped hard and her knees felt weak.

His eyes flared red and the next thing she knew, he was there in front of her. His bloodied hand curved around her throat, bringing the scent of temptation much too close. “Jealousy? You believe that’s what I feel? You’re a fool, Narcise.” He shifted his fingers to cup her jaw no less gently. “If I still wanted you, a bloody damned vampire hunter wouldn’t keep me away.”

His fingers were strong, and she couldn’t keep from inhaling him: the fresh blood, the masculine scent of him, the heat emanating from his body.

“I think we’ve always known what you really wanted,” she managed to say, managed to keep the bitterness from roiling in her. Blocked the horrible images still burned into her memory. “And it wasn’t me, was it, Giordan? My brother is a much bigger prize.”

“Obviously you haven’t told Woodmore that. Or he wouldn’t have bothered to send me here.” Giordan moved closer, his legs brushing against hers. Though he was broader, they were nearly the same height, and his eyes bored into hers.

She couldn’t help it. She stepped back, twisting her face away, and his grip loosened. Her heart was in her throat now and another move closer could make her knees buckle. She wanted to shove him back but she didn’t dare touch him. Instead she wiped his blood from her chin and onto her trousers. “Why do you think he sent me here?” Giordan insisted. Moving closer again. His fangs gleamed now, showing just a bit beneath his lips. “Why, Narcise?”

She could see the pulse pounding in his throat, the vulnerable golden skin in the V of his loosened shirt. Now his hand whipped out, curling into the front of her man’s shirt. He shoved her back, into the wall.

Her sword…damn, she’d left it in its sheath. In the corner. But she was strong, as strong as he was. He didn’t frighten her.

“Just can’t keep from touching me, can you, Giordan?” she taunted, though her mouth was dry. Her heart choked her, pounding hard in her chest. “Isn’t that why he sent you?”

His eyes blazed, steady and yet somehow cold, and his fingers tightened around the linen of her shirt. He yanked her toward him, her body slamming into his as he released her shirt. His arms whipped around her, one at the back of her neck, pinning her thick hair in place, and the other grabbing her hip and pulling her up against his body.

He’d knocked the breath out of her, and for a moment Narcise could only look up into his eyes, ringed with the glow of red fire. Her knees trembled. Her insides swirled.

His bloodscent filled her nose, still oozing from his cut, still printed on her fingers, tempting and rich.

She hated him, hated how he’d humiliated her and used her…but her body knew his too well. Craved it still.

Giordan tightened his grip at the back of her skull to border on pain, holding her head from moving, wrapping her hair around his wrist. His face came closer, his mouth full and ready, his fangs teasing beneath his upper lip, and Narcise closed her eyes. Her own lips softened, her heart raced. She braced herself, feeling the shudder of pleasure already building inside her.

He brushed his lips over hers. So lightly, it was like a breeze. A lush, familiar breeze. She held back a sigh. Then he came back, his parted mouth fitting over hers, a little tease of his hot, sleek tongue swirling around her lips. Warmth shuttled through her in a forceful blast and she followed him, tasting, wanting more.

He released her. Shoved her away so that she bumped against the wall, her eyes flying open.

The smug satisfaction on his face had her leaping for her sword.

“Bastard,” she said, somersaulting over the bed to get to her sheath. She whipped out the blade and faced him. “Get out, Giordan. Or I will use it.”

“As I said,” he repeated, his eyes cold again, his fangs retracted, “if I wanted you, no one would keep me away. Not even you.”

Furious, she lunged, blade out and swiping lethally through the air. He jumped nimbly aside, his eyes filled with arrogant humor. She came at him again, slicing and swirling, but he avoided her much too easily, infuriating her even further.

“You’re too overset, my dear. You’re acting out in haste and—” he twisted and vaulted gracefully over the bed anger. You’re sloppy.”

The chamber was red in her vision, colored red and hot with her fury, and Narcise drew in a deep breath as she spun around. Away from him. He was right, Luce damn him.

She had to gather her control. Breathing heavily, she paused, then turned, holding the saber at the ready.

He stood there, across the room, his breathing a bit heavier but by no means was he out of breath, the bastard. He wasn’t even in a readied fighting position. His short, rich brown curls clustered over his head like that of a Greek god and she knew that the rest of him was as golden and muscular as one, as well. Blood streaked his shirt and stained his hand, where it had slowed to an ooze, and on his trousers.

Narcise met his eyes and lifted her chin. Holding his gaze, she took the point of her sword and opened the palm of her other hand to it. She saw the flare in his eyes, the widening of his nostrils, and she waited.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said, his voice taut.

She raised her brow. “What is it, Giordan? Don’t trust yourself to stay in control?”

“I haven’t fed. In two weeks.”

A little shiver raced over her. That was a long time. Particularly for him.

“If you cut yourself, you know exactly what will happen.”

She did indeed, and the very thought had her trembling inside. Hot and trembly and frightened. And needy. She swallowed hard. “Get out,” she said, stepping back so that he could get to the door. “I’ll not say it again, Giordan.”

He cast her one last inscrutable look, then strode past her to the door. His fingers on the handle, he yanked it open and turned back. “I never figured you for a coward, Narcise.”

She slammed the door behind him, wishing for a lock.

It was a long time before she stopped trembling. And even longer until she managed to dry her tears.

He couldn’t get her scent off his hands. It was as if he’d dipped his fingers into the inkwell of Miss Maia Woodmore, and now they were stained for good.

Dimitri closed his eyes. He had, in fact, dipped his fingers, his mouth, himself into her inkwell—so to speak. He couldn’t slip any more deeply into that inky abyss where he would lose himself, lose control, lose the great walls he’d constructed. Where he’d feel.

His disgusted snort was loud enough to pull himself out of the mental miasma. Satan’s bloody bones, the woman’s got me thinking in metaphors.

He focused his attention on the scenery of London passing by the window of his carriage. The same carriage in which the incident with Miss Woodmore had occurred early this morning, and the reason he didn’t seem able to dismiss it from his mind. Aside from the fact that her very self permeated the cushions.

Braving the sun and getting out of Blackmont Hall early this afternoon—after a fitful attempt to gain a few hours’ sleep—had been the lesser of two evils. He hadn’t been jesting when he enthusiastically agreed with Miss Woodmore’s suggestion that she and Bradington spend their time walking in the garden. But Dimitri hadn’t thought any further than the benefit of getting them out of the parlor, which was too near his study for vampiric ears, and hadn’t considered the fact that the garden was, in fact, just outside the windows of his study.

He simply wouldn’t be able to endure listening to the slushy, sloppy romantic prattle of the reunited lovers.

And it was only partly because, to his great mortification, he had once endowed his own sloppy, romantic prattle upon the lovely, if not improper, Meg. Many, many decades ago.

When he was young and foolish and in love.

He’d been so in love, in fact, that he’d traded his soul in order to live with her forever.

Or so he’d thought.

Bitterness twisted inside him, and Dimitri settled on that unpleasant emotion. It was much better than thinking on feminine inkwells, which had the infuriating result of his belly softening and his veins swelling.

He glanced out the window of the carriage and saw that they’d turned onto Bond and were making their way along a street filled with shops and ladies patronizing them. Their maids and footmen followed along, carrying packages and navigating around dogs, street vendors, dirty-faced urchins and well-dressed gentlemen.

When he’d climbed into his vehicle, Dimitri had no particular destination in mind. He’d simply needed to leave. And Tren, smart man that he was, knew better than to ask if he wasn’t given a direction…and also better than to allow his master to sit in the drive, waiting for the journey to commence. So he’d clucked to the horses and started off.

Dimitri had considered visiting Rubey’s, which was, to put it bluntly, a brothel that catered specifically to the needs of the Dracule. Its eponymously named proprietress, one in a long line of women who’d taken on the name of the original madam, was a particular friend of Giordan Cale—and Voss, as well. She was also exceedingly astute for a mortal woman, as well as attractive, sensual and maternal—all at once.

However, Dimitri had no use for one of Rubey’s women. Certainly there’d been times—rare times—over the last century when he had taken his pleasure, and usually given some in return…but that was always after he’d fed, when the blood thirst wasn’t on him…though there’d been the one incident when his body had gotten ahead of him. He still had the scars on his arm where he’d ended up driving his fangs, instead of into the heaving, writhing woman beneath him.

Dimitri closed his eyes momentarily. The last thing he needed to think about was a heaving, writhing woman beneath him, since he’d had just that this morning. Only with clothing between them, thank the Fates.

He lifted his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration, and Maia’s scent came with it. This after he’d washed his hands thrice.

Was he now branded with her?

And he simply must not think of her as anything other than Miss Woodmore.

When he next looked out the window again, he noted that Tren had taken the opportunity to drive along Fleet and east toward Ludgate. The dome of the new St. Paul’s Cathedral rose over the tightly packed houses clustering around it, visible even through London’s constant filter of fog. At least, to Dimitri the church was new. To everyone else in London, it was the same cathedral that had always been there since its completion a hundred years ago.

But Dimitri clearly recalled the previous structure, whose spire had been destroyed by lightning in 1561, and then almost exactly a hundred years later, the rest of the cathedral had gone up in flames with eighty-eight other churches and thirteen thousand houses in London. The Great Fire of 1666 had melted St. Paul’s lead roof, sending the molten metal pouring onto the streets, making rivers of glowing red heat.

He would never forget the sounds of houses collapsing and towers falling, combined with the shrieks of women and men shouting. The streets were so hot that neither man nor horse could bear to walk on them. He and Meg had earlier taken a room at one of the public houses on Cheapside and were awakened in the dead of night by the shouts and bells clanging. By then the fire already turned the sky golden-red, and smoke filled the air, enveloping the citizens in soot and choking them with smoke.

They stumbled out of the public house as the fire danced on the rooftop next to it, flames leaping like curling devils. Dimitri heard a cry behind him and saw a woman screaming at the small, flaming house, and realized her husband was trapped inside. He didn’t hesitate but dashed around, trying to find an opening in the lashing tongues of fire. Only the front was burning, and Dimitri tore the door from the rear of the building and ducked into a dark, smoky hell.

It was his good fortune that the man was collapsed near the door, and Dimitri was able to pull him free. But by the time he reemerged, Meg had gone missing.

Even now, Dimitri remembered the terror of losing her. The paralysis, empty and cold amid all the hot chaos.

She’d become everything to him, to the man of thirty who’d spent most of his life buried with books and studies and had had little time or experience with the feminine gender. His Romanian mother, in adopting her new homeland of England, had embraced the Puritan tenet that affection toward children led them away from godliness. Thus she’d been remote and cool throughout all of his youth.

His father the earl, a Royalist who’d remained in England during the Cromwell years, took care to stay below the notice of the new government and taught his five sons to do the same by also seeming to adopt the simple, rigid Cromwellian ways. They had little social engagement and spent much of the time during the Lord Protector’s reign away from London.

Thus, the sensual, earthy Meg—who was several years older than he—had changed Dimitri’s world, bringing in a breath of life to an otherwise staid and bland one. She told him about her exciting, dangerous life as an actress in Southwark’s stealth theaters during the time when the public stages were shuttered under Cromwell. Filled with enthusiasm and smiles, she was a bold woman who exuded sensual promise.

Meg had become his life. She lured him, the proper and staid fifth son of an earl, into her bed, and in doing so, wholly snared his heart and mind.

In retrospect, Dimitri had come to realize that she wasn’t nearly as in love with him as he had been with her. Meg was enamoured by the thought of him being a peer and of a wealthy family, and what that might mean if they were attached, but she was not of his class, nor, more importantly, of his moral makeup. She lived for the moment and was scandalously loose while the genteel Dimitri lived only for the future.

Yet, that hot, red night when he emerged from saving the man from a house afire and found Meg missing, Dimitri’s life stopped. He simply couldn’t imagine his world without the sloe-eyed, coy-smiling, curvy redhead and he stood in the burning street, frantic.

Then, somehow, above all of the chaos around them, he heard her voice.

There, up in the window of the room they’d let at the small inn, next to the flaming house. He saw her leaning out the window, screaming for him. She’d gone back inside? Why? Then he saw the ruby necklace dangling from her fingers.

She’d gone back in to retrieve the most recent gift he’d given her.

His mind blank and terrified, Dimitri thought of nothing but saving her. He bolted through the door of the inn, which had just begun to catch fire. Inside it was already filled with choking ash and the heat radiated from the buildings around it.

But he could save her. There was time.

He ran up the stairs, already narrow and steep, but now darker and clogged with hot smoke. Stumbling, staggering, he went two flights until he found the room they’d used, blind and hot, barely able to breathe. The roar of fire filled his ears, the sounds of timber shuddering and heaving as it crackled into debris, the walls warm and rough beneath his fingers.

Somehow, he found her, his hands filled with the soft, familiar warmth of Meg, who’d collapsed on the floor near the door. He gathered her up and fell more than ran down the stairs, his eyes stinging with smoke, gritty and blind. The roof above was now ablaze, and falling pieces from the rafters scattered in front of him, tumbling down the steps and catching against his legs and trousers.

Down, down, down he went, staggering against the walls, at last reaching the bottom. Just then, a loud rumble filled his ears, followed by a horrible crash.

The next thing he knew, there was pain and heat bearing him to the ground, and everything was light…tinged with red and orange leaping everywhere. He coughed, tasted smoke, choking out her name and tried to crawl toward what he thought was the door.

Dimitri dragged them to the opening, his body weak and burning, his lover boneless and unmoving, the ruby still clutched in her hand, the chain wound around her wrist.

Save her. I’ll do anything. Save her. Save us. Anything to live.

The thoughts ran over and over in his mind as he crawled with superhuman strength, over rubble and coals, burying his face in the ground to keep from breathing the smoke.

It was a miracle that he made it from the smoking, blazing building, and even more of a miracle that he was able to pick Meg up and carry her down the burning streets, staggering west and away from the rage of fire.

At last, he collapsed, coughing, his eyes gritty, his hair and back singed and his body screaming with pain. He couldn’t catch his breath. All he could smell was smoke. Her body was warm and comforting next to him.

And Dimitri collapsed there, curling with his lover under a bridge as the fire raged in the distance. The sun had begun to rise in the distance, but the sky was already an arc of red over London.

He closed his eyes, feeling the strength sap from him. Meg hadn’t moved, even when he shook her, tried to listen to her breathing. But his ears were deafened from the great noise, and he couldn’t tell if her chest moved with breath.

Anything. Save us. Let us live.

He fell into sleep, or a faint, or something…and that was when the dark, fallen angel Lucifer visited him. Offered him precisely what he wanted.

I can give you what you want, Dimitri. I can save her for you. Both of you. Live forever. With the woman you love. Will you agree to it? Both of you. Forever. Will you save her?

Even now, Dimitri felt the rush of cold over him when he remembered that moment. The clear blue eyes and the handsome face of the visage in his dreams.

What must I do?

Lucifer smiled. You need do nothing but live. Forever. Enjoy life. You’ll save hers by doing so, and ensure your long life with her.

Dimitri remembered the vague feeling of evil, the cold skittering deep inside him. He opened his mouth—or perhaps only the mouth in his dream—to say no, to ask more, to question, perhaps even to pray…but Luce continued: Do you not love her enough, then? Not enough to save her?

Meg shuddered at that moment, and Dimitri felt her body as it gasped for breath. She was dying. He was losing her. No. He looked at his nocturnal visitor. We’ll live forever? Together. You’ll live forever. Lucifer’s hand reached out in the dream, settling on Dimitri’s left shoulder. Do you love her enough? Do you truly? Will you agree?

Yes. I’ll save her.

The devil’s hand rested on his skin and a blaze of pain seared through him, from beneath his hair, radiating over his left shoulder and scapula. And so it will be.

When Dimitri opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the ruby, dangling around Meg’s neck. She was sitting up, her eyes bright and happy, her hair tumbling down over her shoulders. Not a hint of ash or soot marred her lovely face, nor were her clothes torn or singed.

Dimitri sat up and realized he, too, was intact. Except for a soft throb over his shoulder, right where the devil had touched him.

The city blazed behind them, a few miles away. They smelled the smoke, which choked out the sun and cast a pall over them even here. But they were alive. Uninjured. And together.

London burned savagely for three days.

Meg remained with Dimitri for three months. And then, fully realizing her power as an immortal, she left for greener pastures: younger men, an immortal career onstage and exotic travels.

It took years for the city to rebuild itself, disdaining lumber and using only brick and mortar.

Just as Dimitri rebuilt his own walls, stronger and more solid than they had ever been. Brick by brick.

“You look lovely, Miss Woodmore. Maia,” Alexander said, smiling.

She had her fingers curled lightly around his arm and they were, as planned, strolling through the gardens at Blackmont Hall. The roses still bloomed, but the spring flowers that cast such heady scents—lilac, lily of the valley, tulip—were all gone.

Pink coneflower and Russian sage marked the paths, along with thick green moss and neatly clipped boxwood. Lovely gardens. It was too bad that their owner couldn’t enjoy them…at least, in full sunlight.

“Thank you, Mr. Bradington,” she replied.

They were alone. Her heart should be light. It was light. It was, and she was happy and calm, and—dare she think it?—relieved.

“I do believe you should use my Christian name as you have done in the past,” he said, looking over at her. “After all, we are to be wed. Sooner, rather than later, I hope.”

Maia smiled back and ignored the odd sinking feeling in her middle. “I hope so, as well, Alexander.”

I could not hypnotize you.

You were never enthralled.

Maia blocked the words from her mind, along with the horrible feeling of mortification. It couldn’t be true.

“I’m so glad you’ve returned,” she told Alexander.

She spied an ivy-covered pergola and changed direction so that they walked toward it. Maia wasn’t certain what she had in mind, but the fact that it was shaded and out of sight from the back windows of the house could be a benefit.

“When shall we?”

Angelica. She couldn’t even think of a wedding until Angelica was safely home. And Chas had to walk her down the aisle. And Sonia must come from Scotland. “As soon as you can file for the license,” she replied.

She hadn’t told Alexander about her sister’s abduction, and certainly not about Chas’s occupation. How could she explain something like that? If she could stall for a bit until they got word about Angelica, at least…

“Will it be enough time for you? I can obtain the license easily within a fortnight. Will you be ready in two weeks? I know there is a dress to be made, but also flowers and invitations and announcements, and the food…and where would you like to have the ceremony?”

Maia’s insides warred between delight and misery. Here was a man who cared what she thought, who listened to her, who understood what she had to do. But she certainly could do nothing until her family was back in place. And safe.

And she couldn’t tell him. At least, not yet.

They’d reached the pergola. The shade from the clematis-entwined ivy covered a small area on the footpath, and, as if reading her mind, Alexander paused there, turning her to face him.

“As soon as possible,” she said, knowing that she would delay it if she had to. But perhaps something else to focus on now would be good. There were so many other things she didn’t want to be thinking about. “And I was hoping we could wed at St. Dunstan’s. It’s such a lovely little church.” Her heart was ramming in her chest as she looked up at her fiancé.

He was watching her with his gray-blue eyes. They always seemed so warm and affectionate, unlike those dark, flashing ones belonging to…other people. And he wasn’t quite so tall, nor as stiff and forbidding. He never spoke rudely. He never seemed as if her mere conversation was keeping him from something more important.

“St. Dunstan’s would be the perfect place. I shall make a generous donation and speak with the rector tomorrow. If that is what you wish, Maia.”

She swallowed, noticing the way his eyes changed. His hands closed around her arms and he drew her closer. Her heart was in her throat now, pounding. Her knees were shaky and her insides fluttered nervously. He was going to kiss her.

She was afraid of what it would tell her.