Midnight Court

It was a nightmarish world of shadows separating at the seams, of unending darkness live with the promise of more of the same, Dante thought. The devil take it all—if the devil himself hadn't already done so.

Eyes closed, he took a languid breath, inhaling deeply, filling his lungs. He then wondered why he bothered. The perfumed candles, hundreds of them in this salon alone, thousands of them lining the castle's hallways so its honored guests wouldn't trip or lose their way, had long since ceased to intoxicate. The whirling, bejeweled, corseted bodies of the men and women supplicating themselves on the polished marble floor in time to the music seemed now little more than a bore.

Food was folly, wine a tasteless affectation. The woman bending low over his shoulder to whisper in his ear, breasts plump, rosy-hued nipples clearly visible above emerald green brocade, failed to elicit a manly response. Her air of innocence, real or feigned, was wasted. She had no idea how close she had come to peril, to a twilight beyond despair. Would she invite him, taunt him, breathe upon him if she knew? Would she offer up her fullness for him to suckle? Might she spread her round thighs in a flurry of skirts and lace and guide his tongue to the dark-haired place between them—a private place heretofore penetrated only by her secret thoughts and longings? Perhaps so, he decided. Innocence was wasted on the young. Pathetically. One move of his eyes, the tiniest portion of a smile upward, and this ridiculous creature would be his for the ride.

The tedium was unending, the turn of time merciless. And yet, he thought as he glanced at the untouched plate on the table before him… and yet through it all, beneath it all, down deep in the pocket of the place where his soul once resided, a sharp, dire, incomprehensible hunger raged.

Oh yes, he might have this girl, this tease, this would-be whore, he knew. Just as he knew his hunger would tear him apart, turn him inside out and leave him to burn, if unappeased. He might take her now, here. On the table. On his plate. Next to the costly linens and Belgian lace soaked in the wine he would spill as he laid her there. Think of the chaos that would surely ensue if he were to strip her over-tight bodice from the quivering flesh beneath it with his venison dagger. He could easily pin her sleeves, thus rendering her thin arms immobile, with a well-placed fork or two struck to the gleaming oak slab.

Would he have her slowly, basting her thighs delicately in the honey so graciously supplied by his host? Kneading her pink flesh with his thumbs as his mouth followed the trail of the sticky, sugary delicacy en route to the door to her womanhood?

Womanhood? That was a laugh. This female was nothing more than a girl—silly, inconsiderate, not yet ripe enough for a true mouthful. She wouldn't be able to stand up to his careful ministrations, nor comprehend what was really happening to her. She would be wearing layer upon layer of undergarments, carefully provided by her benefactor or maid to thwart any such action as this. Any such situation as this.

The girl would squirm, were he to cut her free of her fabric barriers. More wine would spill. More food. She would grow tentative as he crawled his way upward, as he unleashed his stiffening manhood, weary of her fidgeting and her cries.

Stunned she would be as he entered her plush, wet, convulsing canal with a brutal, uncaring shove. Her mouth would open. Whimpers would erupt when he ruptured the last shreds of her innocence. Screams would follow, echoing each plunge he made. Then, a last gasp deep in her throat as he withdrew from this gift of maturity to drop his face between her trembling legs. She would pray, silently, lips moving, when his own lips stroked the wound his shaft had created. She would faint as he lapped at the last visage of her lapsed virginity—as he sampled a moistness almost sweeter than wine.

Blushed flesh. Emerald brocade, stretched out like a patch of verdant grass. White lace in shreds. Vaporous candlelight, trailing the scents of musk and malaise. Whispers of onlookers with lustful, envious scowls puckering their painted faces. All of this before dessert.

His chin lifted. His eyes rose slowly from the imagined scene before him, hesitating on the heaving bosom so very near to his mouth. The silly girl's heavy, buxom bosom. He glanced up, meaning to look at her face… meaning to focus on something to ease the endlessness. Anything to end it.

But he caught sight of something else. Something dazzling in the distance. Something that nipped at his attention.

For the first time he could recall, there came a stirring sensation inside of his chest.

A soft thud not unlike a real heartbeat.

A true heartbeat.

"Dante?"

Someone spoke his name, parlaying for his attention, but Dante did not want to be disturbed. He wanted nothing to get in the way of this wave of sensation.

A gloved hand covered his on the table. He held his breath.

"Dante? Is something wrong?"

It took all of his willpower to turn his head, to gaze politely at the woman seated next to him, a woman whose features he barely recognized but whose touch he knew intimately well.

"Is something wrong?" Elizabeth repeated in a voice tainted with the grit of jealous inquisitiveness.

"Wrong?" he returned benignly, purposefully regulating his breath and choosing to ignore the subtleties of her warning.

He was staring. Staring at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A woman who glided into the room like a liquid moonbeam, pale gown glistening like grated jewels in the candlelight; blue-black curls tumbling across naked shoulders. An apparition, Dante guessed. An apparition come to ground?

The vision's hair was like midnight, loosely gathered around her white face. Thick, shiny, buoyant, stray tendrils of darkness caressed her cheeks—the cheeks of an angel—ageless, timeless, pale and perfect.

Dante sat up straighter in his chair, feeling his body shiver with a vague yet poignant ripple of surprise. He strained for a better look at the radiant creature. His ever-whirling mind grew still.

"Dante?"

Not now, he directed silently to Elizabeth, beside him. A moment, please.

A strange scent flooded the room. Exotic. Floral. Unearthly. Otherworldly. Like the creature's trailing gown, the perfumed air wafted—gauzy swirls of scent caught in the flickering candles, drifting over his face.

"Dante," Elizabeth said more adamantly, but Dante couldn't reply. He couldn't speak.

The apparition's cheeks were tinted with the faintest trace of color—an almost fragile flush of pink. Not from a paint-pot or too much drink, Dante knew instinctively. This was the palette of innocent heat, of untried fire. Christ, he could feel that fire from where he sat.

"I see," Elizabeth hissed, removing the hand she had placed atop his and slipping it beneath the table, into his lap. She uttered a sharp, muffled cry. Her features rearranged like water in a shallow pond upon her discovery of what he had swelling there.

"Perhaps I should leave you to it," she snapped, eyes glittering with malcontent, softness dissipated.

Dante looked across to the angel's eyes, and found her hiding hers. Creaseless lids framed by dark lashes closed slightly over light blue globes, the color of daylight. Her action had been demure, wistful, but her eyes were keen, he decided, and symmetrically placed. Her nose was narrow above a full, febrile mouth glossy with the latest tincture of oil. A mouth no doubt tasting of rose or pomegranate. The kind of mouth a man prayed for, longed for, and then used mercilessly for his own purposes. The kind of mouth which could enslave a man and very nearly drive him mad.

"Bloody hell, Dante," Elizabeth whispered as his gaze swept over the angel's smooth expanse of neck, coming to rest on the hollow of her throat.

His erection pulsed.

She wore jewels, great stones of citrine linked with gold, though she needed no such diversions. The gems vied for attention. He wanted to see her flesh undecorated. A more inexperienced eye than his might have seen little past the necklace's all-too-obvious value. A less experienced eye might have stopped there, missing altogether the beauty of the blue veins spreading gracefully beneath the lustrous white skin, toward the graceful slope of her shoulders and the unconscionably immodest cut of her gown.

Dante's gaze lingered seconds more. A twinge of something quite akin to pain took root deep inside of his body. Unable to name this pain, helpless to tear his attention from the angel, he sat mesmerized, knowing he had been lost from the moment he had first beheld her. Lost, as would be the moon without the stars. A strange fever heated his face and his motionless limbs. His head echoed inside with the sound of summer thunder.

The only hope, he knew, was to find a flaw—one single crack in the seamless composition of her glorious whole which would allow him room to breathe. A flaw which would enable him to rebind his rapidly fragmenting composure.

"You're a fool," Elizabeth said.

"Am I?" he returned casually.

"Do you know who she is?"

"I haven't a clue."

"Then I will tell you."

"I'd rather you didn't."

His reply seemed to give Elizabeth pause. "You can't have everything you want, Dante. Not everything," she said a moment later, withdrawing her hand.

"I take that back," Dante said, catching hold of her fingers before she could rise from her chair, his tone so serious that Elizabeth stayed quite still for several seconds more.

"Take what back?" she asked at last.

"Who is she?"

The strength of his left arm was the only thing retaining Elizabeth as she said petulantly, "No. I don't think I shall tell you after all. And when you do find out, my door will be locked."

She wrenched her arm free of his hold and stood. Sliding a finger into the tight space between her own partially exposed breasts, she leaned forward, allowing him a whiff of lavender as well as a closer view of her greatest assets—a frank reminder of things he would be missing if he strayed too far. Her cool cheek brushed against his as she placed something in his hand. A key.

"Then again," she whispered, skirts rustling as she turned, "I do love it when a man begs."

As quickly as that, he was alone. Though he noted Elizabeth's exit, he did not turn to watch. Instead, he took a sip of wine and sat back, fingering the key in his hand, wondering if he shouldn't feel guilty and if he shouldn't pursue something tried and true.

To test himself he looked up and across the lavishly decorated room, this time to meet the blue-eyed stare. He stood with a sharp, unconscious move brought on by the unmasked intensity of her gaze. Caught up in the moment, he failed to notice the man at the angel's side until the man moved. Taking her slender elbow in his hand as if she were mere flesh and blood, this companion ushered the angel across the marble floor toward the far door, passing in and out of candlelight so that her gown sparkled like disseminated dreams. No, Dante thought, sending his message silently and adamantly to her as the door opened and a guard moved aside.

Don't go.

The angel hesitated. Her chin lifted regally. She glanced back over her shoulder, as did her companion, whose angular face was illuminated briefly in a light which bathed him with a reddish glow.

"Damn it to hell!" Dante swore as he bowed his head to the angel's comrade in mock fealty. "Damn it to bloody hell!"

It seemed he had found that flaw he had been searching for, and it was a formidable one.

Lord Alan Fucking Rothchilde.

"Dante?" Elizabeth called out victoriously as he closed the door behind himself.

"Were you expecting someone else?" Dante said.

"It would serve you well if I were."

Elizabeth floated from the shadows and into the light of a solitary candle, scantily clad in something colorless. She tugged upon the ribbon holding the front of her gown, and Dante watched, feeling suddenly sorry he had come, feeling uncommonly disinterested in the yellowish gleam of her naked body.

Elizabeth's creamy drape fell to the ground soundlessly as she floated closer. The lush extravagances of her voluptuous torso filled his vision, blocking the light.

She smelled now of cinnamon.

"You are magnificent," Dante said, reminding himself that he had always considered the lavishness of her curves a delight, and the quickness of her wit a just reward. How now could he ask her for the information he needed? How, in the face of her renewed pursuit, could he insult a woman who had become an ally in a world gone sour?

"Perhaps you're feeling overdressed," she suggested.

He closed his eyes, trying to rid himself of the sensation of having made a terrible mistake by using her key. When her long, warm fingers rested on his arm, he stirred. Though his thoughts had recently flown through the damp air and through each wall of the castle searching for the brilliance of the moon, Elizabeth's touch, as she rubbed up against him, as she carefully removed his coat, seemed merciless in its promise.

"You are quiet," she purred, slipping slender hands inside of his shirt, massaging his chest lightly. "It is hardly like you."

"Too much wine," he murmured, cursing the fickleness of the effect she provided.

"Wine? Is it so?" Elizabeth's mouth nestled close to his ear. "I did not see you finish a single glass."

"You were occupied elsewhere, as I recall."

"I?" She laughed throatily. "That is uncommonly good."

Her breasts were soft against the middle of his back as she leaned still closer, as she thrust her arms beneath his to grind herself tightly to him, confident in her ability to rouse a man.

"No," Dante whispered, sensations coming in ripples as her hands dropped slowly downward, angling toward his waist, "this is uncommonly good."

"You see," Elizabeth whispered triumphantly. "You need me, just as I need you. We complement each other, do we not, while demanding so very little?"

With her out of sight he could almost imagine…

With her body against his he could almost believe…

But her eyes were not of a blue hue, and not so innocent. The flush of color on her cheeks came from a porcelain box, one he had in fact given her.

"Yes," Elizabeth purred as he reached behind with both hands to pin her body to his. But Dante knew he could not yet afford to look upon her face or into her wizened eyes. Not just now. Not as obsessed as he was with the angel.

He had to let the angel go.

Had to.

Didn't he?

As if in answer to his inward question, Elizabeth's fingernails raked across his neck, drawing, he knew, a thin line of blood. Though he winced, the thought arose that he would not long have to withhold the tremendous rise of physical power coursing through his limbs. Nor would he have to be gentle in this taking.

With a single, graceful move, he turned and lifted Elizabeth into his arms. Finding her light in weight, for all her ample graces, he dragged his gaze across her nakedness. He smiled when she moaned. Elizabeth was aware of him as a man, rightly enough, amid all the other things he might be. She still seemed to need what he had to offer, and wasn't afraid. What man could resist this boldness? What beast could turn away?

Yet the bed was not close. Not nearly close enough. If he moved, even a step… If he had time to think clearly about what he was doing and who he imagined doing it to…

Elizabeth's lips found his earlobe. Her tongue, torturously deft, darted into his ear and retreated maddeningly, defying him to pursue his current path of thought. If she knew of his treacherous lusting and the new direction of his desires, she made a good showing of pretending not to care.

That was it. She didn't care.

Why didn't she?

He deposited her on the old hinged chest. Shoving its contents aside with a sweep of his arm, he pressed her back, across the trestle's smooth, polished surface. Elizabeth made another sound, faint and guttural. His action had pleased her.

"Dante?" she murmured, spreading her arms so that her breasts, nipples drawn like peach silk, lifted with the slow rhythm of her breathing.

"Yes?" he queried, watching her shapely legs open just enough to reveal what lay between them. "Yes?" he repeated, hunger now straining at his pants.

Elizabeth reached for him, pulled him down on top of her. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, driving thoughts of the angel deeper into his mind. His mouth hovered above hers.

"She is not for you," Elizabeth whispered. "Not this one. Not this time."

A strange, oddly profound light shone in Elizabeth's eyes as she said this. The light of challenge? Would he rise to it?

Her mouth was still open when he found it. Her exquisite tongue, so recently removed from his ear, so hot and experienced in the finer pleasures of lovemaking, lay in waiting between her parted lips. He brushed his mouth over hers briefly, felt the accompanying swell below his waist, then bore down. He took her mouth in the name of passion, kissing her with a fury that would have terrified any lesser woman. He bent her backwards over the edge of the chest with his hands on her shoulders, holding her tightly, allowing her no time for a breath. And suddenly, behind closed eyes, came a flash of light. A white face formed in the twilight, illuminating his actions, slowing him down.

He hesitated, lips removed from Elizabeth's.

"Now, Dante," Elizabeth said throatily. "Now, or never."

Slender fingers moving like liquid fire found his belt. Without a glance at what lay unleashed, Elizabeth smiled. Dante smiled back. Cupping her full, ponderous breasts in both hands, Dante leaned forward to take one sensitive bit of her gently between his teeth. With a slow, circular motion of his tongue, he closed in, drawing her flesh into his mouth with a slight sucking sound.

Elizabeth's head dropped back, as he knew it would. Her face was alight with ecstacy. He knew how to pleasure her, all right, and she, in turn, knew exactly what it took to allow him to do this. It was a cunning game of erotica they played, with the leader never truly revealed. Give and take. Lunge and retreat. Artful maneuvering, with sensation as the ultimate goal.

But Elizabeth demanded something more this time. He could smell it, sense it. Her blood was up, her life-pulse fast. She would skip all the pleasures between the kiss and the taking. This is what the rapid beating inside of her chest told him. This was the source of the scent radiating from her—the slightly acrid odor of secrets withheld.

What secrets?

Aware of his hesitation, Elizabeth shoved him back so that he might observe the further opening of her legs. She did not quiver, nor feign any such naïveté as she did when they played games in the hallways, or with their tumbled assignations in other places. She would not let him discern what she wanted. She would allow him no time to scrutinize the symptoms he had sensed.

Cautiously, his hand slid between her warm, damp thighs. There came an answering throb between his own. He grunted aloud. Again, she smiled.

He parted the petals of her desire with his finger; it was a pale flower surrounded by a forest of fine, brown fur. Another throb hit him, distant, insistent. He worked his finger inside of this flowering of femininity, inching the surrogate shaft upward. A wave of moisture met him. Hot. Creamy. Smelling of dark, forbidden places. A shudder of delight shot through his limbs. His enlarged staff pressed tightly to her naked hip.

What secrets do you possess, dear Elizabeth?

He sent the question silently to her, yet adamantly.

Why the rush?

What is in it for you if the pleasure is quelled?

Though he entered her body roughly, she made no sound. One hard thrust into the heat of hell's inferno itself, and Elizabeth closed herself around him as only she had the mastery to do. He found her blisteringly heated and hazardously tight, though he had sheathed his sword in this scabbard enough times to wear her skin raw.

"Now," she said, as if he had done nothing, as if she felt nothing of his initial thrust.

Her eyes were exceedingly bright when he looked there. Green eyes flecked with gold. Something unsaid was delicately wrapped in that gold. He nearly pulled back.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked throatily. "Some pathetic virgin who hasn't the capacity for dancing with danger? Some yearling who can't treat a cock properly? Perhaps a vapid version of a woman who doesn't know what kind of things lurk in the darkened hallways of castles like this one? Someone unused to the shadows?"

"You do care, then?" Dante returned without any softening of the cock she had hoped to tease into submission.

"Care?" Elizabeth tossed back, maintaining a tight hold on the edge of the chest as Dante plunged into her depths yet again to prove a point.

"If you care, why don't you say so?" Dante suggested wryly, slamming himself into her with all his might, reaching, he knew, the very core of Elizabeth. And she laughed aloud and opened wider still.

"Why don't you make me," she challenged.

All right, he thought. You will play this game to the hilt, and I will join you in it. Or, he added insightfully, was it the other way around, and Elizabeth is meeting my challenge?

She began to move. Her sleek buttocks undulated. Her insides massaged him, drew him in, compelled him. Her pliant, determined body demanded he take heed, for the juices of her passion were flowing, game or none, luring him, surrounding him, trapping him in spite of everything.

He yanked her from the chest with his prick still buried deeply inside of her and stumbled to the wall. She cried out as her back met hard with the stone. She groaned as he gripped her thighs roughly in his hands. Yet she clamped her thighs around his waist, making it difficult for him to ease himself back.

Her smile was but a memory now. Intensity had overtaken her. Her eyes were closed. Dante stroked her dark, furry patch at the point where he had and was still penetrating her body. She loosened her hold on his back. Her eyelids flapped.

It was enough. He had won this battle, surely?

He jammed himself into her. And again. And again. Over and over, without hesitation or mercy, hearing the slap of her back against the stone, feeling the impact of his body meeting with hers with each breath he took. And Elizabeth rode the storm, wave for wave, refusing to scream or give in, seeming to revel in the excruciating intensity of the pleasure they shared.

Locked together, they tumbled to the floor, crying out for a satisfaction neither of them seemed yet able to find. Faster and faster, harder and deeper still Dante went into the maelstrom, needing to move her, seeking to make her back down. And then she lifted her chin. She turned her head slightly, exposing a glistening patch of pale skin across her throat.

My God, Dante thought fleetingly. So provocative. So white and smooth. So bloody smooth.

When the sky exploded, it was not with stars but with fire. Red fire. The flames of lust, greed, and maybe even hell itself beat against Dante's nakedness, bending his mind, drumming at his temples. He thought he heard himself cry out as Elizabeth pressed herself to him, as he took her skin between his teeth. With an ache of monstrous proportions that barely gave credence to her gesture, he poured every last bit of himself into Elizabeth Rothchilde. His final thrust shook them both to the bone.

And then with the heartiness of a conqueror, he bit right through her soft white flesh.

Elizabeth's cry was inward, silent, and stuck in her throat. Ecstacy? Yes, she thought fleetingly, and then the sensation was replaced by a stab of pain that seared her flesh and scalded her blood to the point of boiling.

Her skin and stomach were alive with fire. Fire so vivid as to be insufferable. Was she dying? Was this what the shadow of death felt like?

Her body seized, muscles rigid with the faintest trace of fear, and then the mouth on her neck tugged harder still, sucking, drawing the fire upward through her arms and shoulders. Her blood rushed to meet his demands.

Dante's demands.

Blackness swallowed Elizabeth soon after shadows leaned in. Even the flicker of the candle could not hide what was taking place: Dante's dark head against her cheek, Dante's teeth embedded into her flesh. And yet she seemed somehow removed from these things, curiously distanced from the action she had invited.

Oh yes, she had invited it. Him. This. She had asked for Dante to show himself, and now she had gone beyond the realms of couplings and torrid sexual assignations. She had wanted to know. She had had to know. So why now fight what she had gathered to her? Surely it was too late to struggle? Much too late to protest? The fire had reached her throat. Everything below was lost to feeling, to sensation, having been forsaken in the name of love. Sense had been abandoned for this one man, for this particular creature.

Christopher Dante.

Should she give in? Elizabeth considered this. The thought fled. She brought it back again. And then feeling suddenly reappeared, as though it had not truly been distanced for good.

A throb accompanied the drawing of her life's blood. Faintly it came on, the sensation similar to catching and holding a man's eyes for the first time after secretly lusting for him. A sensation exchangeable for the impact of lips touching for the first time.

Flames rushed downward through her chest, abdomen, thighs, and over her heated skin, the fire now coursing, singeing, insistent. Down the heat went, toward the site of her sexual pleasures, toward the door whose key she had distributed to one man only. To a man who was not merely a man.

Could there possibly be any blood left to engorge the organs driving her desire? Yes. She felt it now. God, how she felt it. Waves of heat burst, then retreated, flaring white-hot, darting in and out of the space between her thighs. God. Oh, God.

What was he doing?

She shook, moved, undulated. Still, she had no control over her arms. Her back arched with an audible crack. Her legs opened. Only then did she notice that Dante's mouth had left her neck, and that Dante's eyes—his great dark eyes—were peering into her own.

She went into those eyes, felt herself drowning, slipping.

"Elizabeth," Dante whispered.

As if he had control over her very consciousness, Elizabeth's attention returned to his face. Dante's features filled in where only paleness had reigned. Black eyebrows arched severely over his luminous eyes, eyes as bottomless as her greed for him had been. His full lips opened, revealing the dagger-like sharpness of his teeth. But there was something else. His cock grew steadily harder against her thigh.

Elizabeth wanted that great hard shaft inside of her. She had never wanted anything so badly. The desire nearly drove her mad, and yet she was helpless amid the intensity of the heat and loss of control. She could not pull him close, nor could she press herself up against him to show him how much she needed what he could offer. She could not move her lips.

But Dante knew well enough what she needed. Perhaps he had read her mind? He rolled on top of her, seemingly weightless. His shaft once more entered her heat. She could feel this! This was what she wanted!

Dante began to move, slowly, rhythmically. All the while, he looked into her eyes, never leaving her, his expression sober, almost pained.

"And now you know," Dante said, velvet voice mingling with the blaze and the sizzling juices her body produced without her help. "You know what I am."

Elizabeth tried again to form a word. She tried desperately to move her lips. Dante laid a finger against them as he plunged again into her body's waiting inferno. And again.

Breath caught at Elizabeth's throat, stuck. Dante's hands encircled her throat, gently closing in.

"And what will you do with this knowledge?" Dante asked, body continuing its furious dance with hers, fingers massaging her throat softly.

He would not kill her, Elizabeth decided. He would have done so already had that been on his mind. Of course, she had considered the fact that this night might very well be the end of her. What beast would want his secrets brought to light? Nevertheless, she had to take the chance, had to see if he felt anything for her. She had to keep him occupied—with her, inside of her—long enough for Dante to lose sight of the other… woman. Her brother's vermin. Satan's bride.

"Ah." The sound escaped from her closed throat. Dante drank in her cry by placing his mouth over hers. His hips stopped moving. He eased himself back.

No! she wanted to shout.

Dante's expression rearranged as he stared at her face. In a graceful rise to his feet, he scooped her up into his arms. He held her against him, while her own limbs dangled uselessly over the carpet like things disconnected.

Her head lolled. She could not lift it, could barely breathe. Had the fire grown dimmer? Was life draining away after all? Is this why he'd stopped?

The room began to spin, slowly at first, then faster. Dante! she thought, before losing the shape of his name.

He looked down at her, his face still pale, still white, not at all flushed from his conquest. "Yes," he whispered. "You are alive, my dearest Elizabeth. Foolish, but alive."

She floated downward. Softness met her. Pillows. Bed. His angular, deftly chiseled face came closer. "This is what you wanted?" he asked. "To be sure of what I am? To hold my secrets so completely as to have me a slave to your future wishes?"

Could the devil be so perfectly chiseled? Elizabeth wondered. Was Dante's beautiful countenance held together by magic? Beauty to draw beauty? Perhaps his face, his wide shoulders and narrow waist were carefully chosen from the pools of the blood of his victims. Perhaps the sheen of his rugged beauty was outward only, and inside of him only hunger persisted.

His dark expressive eyes now lacked spark. The white spaces surrounding them were swimming with red. "Rest, my beautiful and foolish Elizabeth," Dante said, sweeping her hair back with his fingers, laying his palm to her cheek. "Your strength will return on the morrow if you care for it. We shall see then what your secrets are."

Leaving a kiss on her forehead, he then distanced himself. Without his attention, Elizabeth could think more clearly. The fog began to clear. Secrets, he had said. But he had not gotten them from her, even though he had shared his own. Christopher Dante had no idea what she had protected him from this night and what she might have given up to do so. He had no idea who she had saved him from.

But that was not all, not the extent of things, she reminded herself. Not by the half. Dante might have her lust, her love, her loyalty, and even a taste of her life's blood, but Dante did not know everything.

She closed her eyes, drifted, and fell.

Rothchilde castle's halls were mired in the fading echo of his own shout when Dante slipped quietly from Elizabeth's rooms. The sound seemed deafening; it seemed to rumble through the very stone and mortar surrounding him.

He paused to lean against the thick stone wall and found it icy after the warmth of Elizabeth's bed. He found the hallway air dank after the luscious scent of Elizabeth's naked limbs.

He inhaled, coughed, wiped a thin trickle of blood from his lip with the back of his hand. He stared at the blood, then glanced toward Elizabeth's closed door, able to feel her in there, able to hear her breathing. Able to hear the rush of blood in her veins.

He almost smiled—until he remembered that he had not pulled her secrets from her, after all. He had not won, nor even been a player in this latest game of hers, it suddenly seemed. Damn it all to hell. The round belonged to her, didn't it?

Most disturbing.

Arms lowered, Dante stood straighten. What had she kept from him, and how had she kept it? Why was he grinning, in spite of himself? It very well could be that he, plainly, simply, had succumbed to Feminine Mystique. Him. After all this time. And though he had tried to fight it, he knew now for certain that he was not immune to the lure of Elizabeth's wiles, no matter how much his thoughts intended to stray. Worse yet, as Elizabeth lay nestled in the great bed, he had found her strangely fragile. Almost compellingly vulnerable.

"Pah!" he spat. "Elizabeth, vulnerable?" But his thoughts refused to reassemble in any kind of usable order once he had considered this. Elizabeth had done this to him, had taken from him his wits. She had robbed him of his manhood—whatever of his manhood he still retained—and he couldn't even guess how she had done it. Mightn't the loss of superiority he suddenly felt be due to the fact that Elizabeth hadn't been satisfied with his performance?

A wave of apprehension washed over him.

Why?

Again, he looked to her door. Had Elizabeth expected something more from this dark union?

How long had she known what he was?

"Bloody damn and blast!"

What was Elizabeth trying to do? Why would she seek out a member of the devil's clan, she who had long survived without succumbing to it? How could she invite him into her bed and then trust him to leave her soul the way he'd found it? Well, almost the way he had found it.

Grinning wickedly, he recalled the shape of Elizabeth's luscious hips. The feel of her seamless skin. The way she had used both of those things to ensnare him.

And now she knew what he was. She would have no doubts about it. Devil's spawn. Nightshade. Predator. He had been called many things in many places, but no voice had ever raised against him twice. No one had ever withstood his careful scrutiny. Those who strayed, those who had rallied against his kind had died terrible deaths. Unspeakable deaths. Yet… Elizabeth Rothchilde had offered herself up. Sought him out. Elizabeth Rothchilde, for all her obvious guile, was indeed a formidable woman. The exception.

Or else it was some kind of an elaborate trap.

"Duke?"

The hallway darkened for Dante. His smile dissolved.

"Duke?"

The approaching scent was of youth, of sour, unbathed flesh.

"A note for you, my lord," a young lad said in a voice that wavered as much as his image did in the flickering candlelight.

Dante tilted his head, wary of the interruption. Then he stretched out a hand to accept the bit of parchment the lad held at arm's length. A roar of hunger pounded in his chest. A bit of leftover dampness gathered on his brow as he worked to keep this hunger at bay—hunger for the lean muscle and strongly pounding heartbeat inside of the lad's scrawny chest.

"What is it, I wonder?" Dante pondered, staring at the paper, unable to focus.

"I do not know, Duke Dante. Will you require anything further?"

The lad's tenor was nasal. His arms shook as though they had just been plunged into a bucket of ice water.

"Have you anything warm to drink?" Dante taunted.

"No. No, my lord. Shall I—"

Dante held up a hand to cut off the lad's excuse. Something else nagged at him. He closed his eyes, lifted the paper closer to his nostrils. Perfumed paper. Exotic. He opened his eyes, waved a hand at the waiting lad. "Off with you then."

The lad nodded, bowed his head, and took two steps backwards, still facing Dante.

"There is something further?" Dante inquired, lowering the parchment, wondering who would miss this lad in the morning when he didn't make himself available for work.

"She… she bid me make certain you read the note, Duke Dante."

Dante fingered the parchment but did not take his eyes from the lad's ashen face. "Whom do you speak of, then?"

"Lord Rothchilde's…"

"Bride?"

"'Twas the woman who gave me the note."

"Ah, I see. And where does Rothchilde's future bride reside, lad?"

"His future bride is in the tower."

The tower. So close to the light when the sun needed to rise, Dante thought. How long had he spent with Elizabeth? How much time was left until sunrise?

"The lady bid you wait at this hour?" Dante asked. "Well then, we cannot have you miss your beauty sleep, can we?"

Sensing the lad's nervousness, able to smell the lad's malaise, Dante lifted the parchment. The paper was sealed with a stamped crest. Blood-red wax bound the edges of the paper.

At the sight of the wax, Dante's hunger flared. The lad's heartbeat became infuriatingly loud.

"Do you belong to the woman in the tower, the sender of this note, or to the castle?" Dante asked the lad.

"I serve Lord Rothchilde," the lad said bravely enough, for all the weakness of its conviction.

"Have you served him long?"

"A fortnight only, Duke Dante."

Another step back. The lad's hand went to his head before remembering himself and his position.

"You can take me to this woman in the tower? You know the way well enough?" The words sounded odd to Dante as he said them, as if they had been sifted through his tight throat. Hunger raged now, nearly driving him to his knees. Elizabeth had been but a fine wine preceding his necessary supper.

"The woman said you would come," the lad offered humbly.

"Did she, indeed?"

And she had sent him a package, all tied up in sinewy muscle and reeking of fear. The question was: Did she send the lad on purpose? Had Rothchilde already turned his future bride? He did not think so. He had seen her, sensed her innocence, smelled that innocence from across the room. If Rothchilde had turned her without Dante knowing it, Christopher Dante had lost his edge.

And the devil had put the angel in his tower.

The devil, as did most men, preferred toying with the divine.

As Dante looked up at the lad, he felt his smile return. If the lady had sent him the lad unbeknownst to her circumstances, or his, and unbeknownst to the dangers of Rothchilde castle after dark… well…

"You may tell the lady I will come."

He almost did so now, just thinking about her. Both his cock and his cravings were swelling beyond containment. And so soon after being appeased.

"You have not…" the lad began before remembering himself.

"Yes?" Dante said, moving closer to the boy.

"Read the note," the boy finished.

"Yes, well I find I need that warm drink after all," Dante said. "It will only hurt a little," he added with a swift, graceful lunge forward.

Dante sped through the complex castle corridors. As he walked, he removed his bloodstained coat and tossed it aside. Visions of the angel filled him, now that his hunger had been appeased. He had regained some control.

Angel. Her skin would be as white beneath her gown as it had been above it. He might inch that gown over her bare shoulders slowly, deliberately. Torturously.

The angel's doe-like eyes, so bright and blue amongst the bottomless blank eyes of the night creatures, might plead with him to desist. Angels might imagine that men and their devilish counterparts might obey.

So senselessly naive.

Ah, and angels should not yet be experienced to a man's hand, gentle or otherwise. They could not be ethereal if they had ever closed hand or mouth over a suitor's engorged shaft. These very deficiencies would be the reasons Alan Rothchilde had chosen her. Virgin. Simple. Perhaps a sacrifice from her family, her village, her own castle? A barter for days of safety from the Rothchildes and their kind? Such things were common near to a nest.

Rounding a corner, Dante came up short. Senses on high alert, he grabbed hold of the coat of the servant halted there.

"Where would a man keep a star, had it fallen to the earth?" Dante asked the poor frozen man who obviously knew nothing of him other than what he could discern from Dante's clothes and noble bearing.

"You do not know the answer to my riddle?" Dante taunted. "Then perhaps you can tell me what part of darkness we are in. After midnight, or before sunrise?"

"Early," the servant said. "Or late, as the case may be. The sun is not just yet above ground."

"Is something amiss that would cause you to be about in the dark?"

The man looked up at Dante, two heads taller than himself. "I am waiting for a changing of the guard."

"Guards? For what?"

"Protection."

Dante released the man. He must be close to her now. Close to the angel. "Guard, is it? Then you must see to your task. And mind that you look around corners before you entangle yourself for good."

"By your leave, sir."

"No. By yours."

Dante glanced past the man, up the stairway from whence the man had come. The stairway to the tower. Smiling fully now, he repeated, "Where would someone hide a star fallen to earth? The answer is, the nearest place to heaven."

Hands raised, ready to push open the tower door, Dante hesitated. A question arose to plague the living daylight out of him and dampen his spirits. Though virgins were indeed rare in his travels, would a virgin's blue eyes truly compare to the emerald, intelligent, sometime belligerent stare of a paramour? His incredible paramour?

Elizabeth.

Would this angel so willingly give in to the darkness just to keep him close? More likely she would scream her bloody lungs out and he'd have to take care of that right off.

Another thought came, intrusive, blurring his way to the angel. Why had Elizabeth been so willing to sacrifice herself? How had she known about him?

Secrets.

Bloody hell, what did Elizabeth Rothchilde think she was doing? What was she keeping to herself?

The tower room lay in darkness. An acrid odor of burned-out candles permeated the air. A tapestry had been flung back to allow in the cold outside air.

Dante looked to the window, where a pink shadow tinted the stone. The sun would soon rise. Time was fleeting.

Despite the danger of approaching daylight, he was pleased with himself. He felt lucky. A note from the angel remained in his hand. The guard had conveniently removed himself, saving Dante the trouble. And the round room was empty, save for the person lying in the over-large oaken canopied bed in the center of it.

The angel was alone.

"Do angels need beauty sleep?" he whispered.

Without caution, he strode to the bed and swept back the heavy draperies. The benign action sent a thrill to the tip of his boots. There she was, luminous in her dark coverlets, long-necked body curled into a ball.

Angel.

Dark hair flowed across the pillows, uncoiffed and natural, like a waterfall spilling over sand. The angel's face was hidden by her hands. No jewelry adorned her fingers or wrists, contrary to the common practice women preferred of keeping their baubles to themselves. The tattered lace of a frivolously gauzy shift lay against her neck; not at all proper attire for the season.

Hand outstretched, Dante rested his fingers upon a strand of her hair. A shudder rocked him. Her hair was as black as midnight. Her skin was pure white, like goose down, like he remembered. Without touching her, he traced the outline of her cheek just inches above it, then drew back. A familiar pain shot through him. His stomach churned with a familiar heave.

The angel's bed was hung with garlic.

Dammit to hell!

Alan Rothchilde would surely have ordered it placed there to make certain no hands touched her until his did. That no one making use of the open window could stomach a long look at his future bride.

"The devil take you, Rothchilde," Dante murmured.

But though the garlic was a minor setback, it did provide one answer on his list of questions: Rothchilde had not yet turned her. The angel was intact.

Fingers to his lips to keep from laughing, Dante considered this further. The angel must indeed be special for Rothchilde to have withheld his infamous hunger. The cad. The brute. The bugger. His appetites were legendary.

Face lowered to hers, Dante took closer stock of the angel, holding his breath so as not to inhale the garlic into his lungs.

The angel, it seemed, might have skin like down, but she possessed no feathered wings. Too bad about the wings, he thought. It would have been a nice touch.

Still, this angel seemed completely vulnerable in her fetal pose, knees drawn up, back rounded. A position of self-protection. A little ball of naïveté. Did she realize to whom she was betrothed, and what would soon befall her? Had she any idea what she would become, if deemed worthy of Rothchilde's hand?

Undoubtedly not.

"Perhaps the same thing that keeps Rothchilde away from his future bride, at least temporarily, is what holds my own hands back," Dante reasoned as he stared. Though he was experienced in the art of making love to women and in shunning old superstitious devices used to keep creatures such as himself out… though he was twice this angel's weight and several hundred years her senior… she had the one thing they all coveted. True innocence.

"I will have you, my angel, if I so desire." Dante crooned so quietly, the words were a sigh. "I cannot remember what your thoughts must be like. I cannot conceive of a time when walking in the light meant life without the threat of peril."

She stirred. He stepped back.

A sound escaped from her lips. Her eyes opened. But she was blind in the dark. Dante covered her mouth with his hand to stifle a second sound.

"Not yet, my beam of starlight," he whispered, feeling the presence of the garlic as a humming inside of his head and a heaviness in his limbs. "I will not force myself upon any woman. I respect your kind, and hold you in the highest esteem."

He could rip her from the bed, of course. He could remove her from her sacred temple, away from the restraints of the beastly weed that surrounded her. So, why didn't he? What was wrong with him? He had fed. He had been sexually appeased. He always took what he wanted.

This was Elizabeth's fault, he knew with sudden certainty. His thoughts flew back to her, to the way he had left her. What he had done to her. And to the secrets he had been unable to unlock.

Elizabeth's infernal secrets.

Pain was beginning to spread from his stomach to his head. Particularly potent garlic, or merely the insufferable remembrance of having left loose ends in a room below?

With a glance to the window, to the angel, to the door, he backed away from the bed. At the door, he stopped.

"Vulnerabilities are deadly in this court. You must come to realize this or you will not be safe."

He tugged at the door, considered that toying with her might be more fun than a quick conquest anyway, then turned once more toward the angel. "It is only with extreme caution that one can truly be free. You may trust me well on this."

Elizabeth lay where he had left her, tumbled and wrapped in her blankets of fur. Robbed of so much of her life's force, Dante knew she would be unable to challenge.

He sat down beside her, found her shivering.

"I suppose it would be useless to ask where you have been," Elizabeth said in a voice emerging as little more than a whisper.

"I cannot explain," Dante said.

Carefully turning Elizabeth over, Dante slipped his arms beneath her shoulders to lift her from the pillows.

"You have never professed love for me and I have never demanded it," Elizabeth said, words taking some time to get past her bruised, swollen throat. "Have you returned for the information you seek? Shall I give it to you for leaving me like this? As a reward?"

"A reward for what?"

"Unraveling your true nature."

Dante looked closer at Elizabeth's wan face and waited for her to go on. He knew how sick she must feel. His own throat tightened.

"Her name is Dominique. But I am afraid, my beautiful lover, that my brother owns her, body and soul."

"Does he, indeed?"

"Rumor has it he won her." Elizabeth paused to cough. Dante wiped the speckles of blood from her chin with the back of his hand and refrained from touching his lips to the stain.

"She was a lavish gift from a bad debtor," Elizabeth continued weakly. "Plucked from a nunnery, they say. Well educated in some things, while sadly lacking in others. One can see this in her eyes, can they not? Would you be thinking her an unlikely candidate for the wife of my brother?"

"That depends on what comes with her."

"You assume there is more to her than a pretty face?"

Elizabeth struggled to breathe, to speak. Dante laid a cool hand to her throat to ease her discomfort. Elizabeth looked up to see the frown he was wearing.

"I have heard some mention of properties, true enough," Elizabeth confided, rallying, determined not to faint as the pain in her throat increased. "Yet the way my brother looks at her… The way you looked at her…"

She closed her eyes, fighting hard to finish what she had started. "What is it about her, Dante? What is her lure? You know nothing of her. Surely you do not crave her professed innocence? Every woman is innocent once in her life. Only once."

Dante ran a hand slowly over Elizabeth's silken shoulder, remembering what he had given up this night to return here. Conquest could wait. Elizabeth was an unfinished detail.

He said, "She is beautiful, is she not?"

"Ah," Elizabeth sighed. "Beauty. Is this your answer?"

"I am no poet, Elizabeth, nor am I likely to become one at your request."

"Yes, and my brother has gotten to her first, my keen friend. You would do well to remember it. His plans include nothing less than marriage."

Elizabeth observed his reaction, warded off light-headedness with a turn of her neck. "Whatever it is that you see in her, my brother also sees. He watches over her carefully and has set others to the task of doing the same. Do not be fooled. The girl is as much a captive here as she was in that nunnery, and nowhere near as safe."

Unsafe? Didn't he know it, Dante thought, allowing his fingers to drift to the swell of Elizabeth's breasts, observing the faint rise and fall of her breath.

"The bad debtor. The one who gave her away," he said. "Who was this?"

"Her father."

Dante's fingers hesitated in their exploration.

"It would seem that we are not the only dismal family in England," Elizabeth added laconically.

"Has this father of hers a name?" Dante asked.

"He does."

"What might that name be?"

"Wallace."

A small storm gathered upon the outskirts of the ivory sheets that surrounded Elizabeth's body as Dante heard the name. Conscious of nothing but the implications of this, he went inward for several seconds, reemerging only when Elizabeth's cough returned.

"I have every right to be jealous," she said.

"I'm sorry."

"As you cannot have her, I suppose your apology matters little."

"I am sorry, nonetheless."

Elizabeth's expression had dulled. With the dawn's light gaining strength in its battle over night, Dante could see her eyes less clearly, but found them round and bright, despite what he had done to dilute their color. For the first time that he could recall, he felt truly displeased with himself. He felt guilty. And then there might be a small bit of anger thrown in. Had Elizabeth merely allowed this… for love?

Slowly, he placed her back on her pillows, eyes locked to hers. He thought her suddenly younger than her twenty-two years, and much less wizened and callous than she pretended to be. Had she been drained of those trappings?

"I'll not help you," she stated faintly.

"I have not asked for your help."

"You will soon enough."

"On the contrary, I would ask of you nothing of the kind. I would do nothing to jeopardize your position here."

"I do not give a damn about my position here."

"One of us has to."

"I do not love you, Dante."

"Not even a little?"

Her green eyes softened, Dante imagined. But had she read his mind? Remnants of long-strained and departed heartstrings pulled at his chest. Elizabeth was correct in that he had never professed to love her. He could not love her, could not love anyone. He had no heart for such things.

"I stay here because of you, but I do not necessarily love you," Elizabeth told him. "Your feelings for Alan's bride are merely a nuisance."

Unable to find the strength to sit up, Elizabeth sagged back down to the covers. Her hand found Dante's, briefly, resting lightly. She said with complete directness, "My brother will kill you if you touch her."

"I have no intention of allowing him such an opportunity."

"I know you better than you think, Dante."

"Yes, I believe you do."

"You will leave?"

"And miss the festivities? I wouldn't think of it."

"My beautiful Duke, devil, scoundrel. You must be careful. My brother already fears you. He fears anyone with a better title and a bigger…" Elizabeth coughed, went paler, closed her eyes.

"Yes, Elizabeth?" Dante pressed, bringing his face nearer to hers.

"My brother wishes he were half the man you are. He will not take kindly to your attentions."

"No? Then the Rothchildes have very different tastes, do they not?"

Elizabeth smiled. The smile dissolved into pain. "My brother allows me freedom in this castle because he fears me. I am able to do as I please because I am discreet."

Her expression grew clouded. Her lips glistened beneath the lick of her tongue. Dante watched her carefully.

"Alan will not be as lenient with her. You must promise me something, Dante. I will not help unless you do."

"What will you have of me, Elizabeth?"

"I would have you come to me each time you think of her. In this way, everyone will be safe."

Dante searched the outlines of Elizabeth's face, observing how close to fainting she was, how transparent she seemed in some areas, while maintaining her infuriatingly secretive world. Safe? he thought. She could not possibly believe being with him could be safe. Had she no idea of what he had done to her merely minutes ago? Or the battle he had faced in trying to keep her alive once he had had a taste of her?

Safe? He leaned forward, inhaling the smell of her fatigue, discerning no scent of fear. It came to him in that moment that her lack of fear was what made this union so thrilling.

He laid his lips on her cheek, touched her chilled skin with his tongue. Her skin was alive, though pale. Elizabeth was a creature who fed on sunlight.

The smell of dried blood on her throat floated to his nostrils, producing a strange mixture of pleasure and guilt. More inner battles.

His hands shook slightly.

"Perhaps it is a pity you can read me so well," he concluded, mouth moving over the bones of her chin, hands sliding into her thick, tangled hair.

"Yes, perhaps," Elizabeth whispered.

Dante felt the vibration of her reply against his lips. He felt her skin quiver.

"If my brother truly knew me well, he would shake in his boots," she said. "My mere thoughts would bring him to his knees in despair."

"Then it is better he gets no wind of your talents, dearest Elizabeth. That is a fact."

Had Elizabeth become deranged, Dante wondered? Had her loss of blood confused her? Why would Alan Rothchilde fear any woman, let alone his own sister?

"My fee, Dante," Elizabeth muttered.

"Fee?" His mouth hovered above hers, where the scent of blood came to him on the air she exhaled.

His hunger returned. Desire strained at his breeches.

Elizabeth looked up at him wearing an unreadable expression.

"My fee for the help I will offer is that you must come to me when I call. Always. Regardless of whom it is you envision beneath you, I will have your…"

"Yes?" Dante prompted.

"Friendship. Fealty. Will you swear to this, Dante?"

"It is something you needn't have wasted a wish on, Elizabeth."

Words seemed to bubble deep within Elizabeth's chest. A rivulet of blood, now nearly slowed to a trickle, would be inhibiting her breath, Dante knew. The loss of blood would be choking her, weakening her.

"We have a bargain, then," Elizabeth whispered, voice rattling, then trailing off into oblivion.

"We have, indeed, my fair one." At least until I know what you are about.

"Dante?" Elizabeth called, barely.

"Yes?"

"I will kill you myself before I will allow my brother to do it."

"A comforting pledge, dearest Elizabeth, to be sure. I feel much better already."

Dante ran his fingers over her neck, brought a bit of caked blood to his lips. But he did not taste what lay upon his finger. His hunger was too dire. He was too needy. And she could lose no more of her life's essence.

Elizabeth's lips parted. She strained, winced, spoke in hushed phrases. "I wonder," she said.

Dante leaned in closer to hear.

"I wonder… why no one… saved me."

As Dante stared down at her peaked face, and swept the honey-hued hair back from her dampened brow, he made a vow.

No further harm could come to Elizabeth. She was much too valuable. Much too endearing… and delectable.

No harm would come to her.

He would see to it.

The steward, carefully chosen for his discretion and similar nocturnal appetites, opened the door to Dante's rooms. The space was dark, its walls heavily concealed by burgundy draperies, its windows boarded by thick wooden shutters.

Dante brushed past.

"My duke," the steward said, "you have a visitor."

Dante paused, said wryly, "Dessert, perchance? How thoughtful."

The steward's face was covered by the glow of an uneasy sweat. "The lady would not hear a word of protest." A gold coin lay exposed on his open palm. "Little enough use the coin will do me when you have me hung for admitting her."

Dante sniffed the air, where a strange scent floated. Soap? Lye? Old bruised skin?

He turned.

A woman stood in the corner, barely discernable in the dark, save for an expanse of light-skinned face. An old woman, Dante saw, dressed in black. The black of a nun's habit? The black of mourning?

"I am distressed to have disturbed you, Duke Dante," the woman offered in a seraphic voice.

The skin on Dante's arms chilled. His nose wrinkled.

"I have but little time here," the woman added. "The guards will soon find me."

"Are guards after you?" Dante inquired.

"Protection is what they suppose. From what, one might wonder?"

"Thieves? Assassins? Monsters?" Dante suggested.

"You know of such dangers in this castle?"

Dante smiled.

"You find my plight amusing?" the woman queried, showing, Dante thought, some bravado, though her hands were clenched and her teeth chattered.

"I know nothing of any plight," Dante said, smiling more.

The woman's lips parted as if she would protest, though she did not. Her lips were, Dante noted, thin and dry, and no doubt an example of what else lay beneath her dress. She smelled of leather.

"Is this the way people behave at court?" she demanded at length. "Does everyone here find amusement in my girl's torment?"

"Your girl?"

"Lady Wallace."

Most interesting, Dante thought. Most interesting, indeed.

"Has Lady Wallace sent you here?" he asked. "Is it not an unusual time to come calling?"

"She has not sent me. I seek answers."

"Ah, it is not to be a rendezvous, then?" Dante countered. "How disappointing."

"Rendezvous?"

The woman spoke the word with a perfect French accent. Dante knew her tongue had wrapped around this word in her mouth. He imagined what her withered tongue would feel like wrapped in such a way around his cock. An image came to him of how her grainy flesh would hang shapelessly from her brittle old bones. Like a plucked chicken.

He grimaced.

"Does the term 'rendezvous' not mean, in actuality, mystery and false alliances?" the woman said, wary of his lightness.

"Why yes, I suppose it does," Dante agreed. "But I am tired. Get to the point, if you will."

"I have come to ask your help."

"And how might I be of help to a woman such as yourself?"

"Rumor…" The woman paused, started over. "I have been forewarned about you."

"Nothing too dire, I trust?"

"At the same time, I have also heard tell that you are a gentleman. Is this true?"

"Not particularly, I'm afraid. A title is never a guarantee, you know."

How many years had it been since he had been a gentleman? Too many to count. Too far to go back.

The woman sidled toward the door as far as she could without passing Dante. He now caught the scent of her fear. Pungent, fermented, withered.

"Your lady sent me a note," Dante said.

This seemed to startle the woman. Her head came up and tilted, as if she would look at his comment from all angles. Her cheeks were strained above her black collar. "She sent no note to you, sir. She would not dare do such a thing."

"Then it seems I was mistaken."

And who could have sent the note? Dante wondered now. If the angel had not, who had? Why hadn't he read the blasted thing?

"Perhaps Elizabeth Rothchilde sent it," the woman said.

Dante's eyes crept slowly up her wrinkled face.

"It was she who suggested I gain your confidence," the woman explained.

"Elizabeth is a thoughtful woman," Dante confirmed, fingers curling, back rigid with the mention of Elizabeth's name.

"You did see Lady Wallace tonight?" the woman asked. "It was you who came to her?"

Dante observed how her hands went to her throat, and then, catching him watching her, the woman dropped her hands to her sides. She would be the angel's servant. Perhaps even a relative less fortunate than the angel. Unless one considered where the angel was and what her fate would be.

"What is it you want here?" Dante asked impatiently, hearing in the thick walls the resonance of Elizabeth's voice imploring him to stay well clear of Alan Rothchilde's bride.

The woman across from him reeked of dread. The room stank of it. The odor was all too familiar. Ten foot-thick walls sealed them off from the rest of the castle and its occupants. No one would hear if she shouted, Dante reasoned. These rooms had been chosen with care. No one would come to her rescue.

But then, he was tired beyond belief. And the old woman held no promise. Dawn had arrived beyond the wall. He could feel it. He could sense the heat of the sun, though his room had never been exposed to it. He could taste the light.

Somewhere above, Alan Rothchilde would be settling in for a nap, as would the others of Lord Rothchilde's dark entourage, his "Midnight Court." The beasts would sleep, as he would. The rest of the world might turn, but the night creatures would not be a part of it.

"Will you help her?" the woman dared to say, interrupting his musings, disrupting the pull of sleep that lay over him.

Dante felt his crossness coming on. His need for rest is why he would forego the pleasure of throwing this woman to the wolves, he told himself. This is why he would allow her to escape. He was fatigued, drowsy, uninterested. His mind was occupied elsewhere.

In spite of that, he could save her for his steward. He might easily best her with an arm tied behind his back. Two arms. But then the pleasure would be halved if he hadn't the ability to touch her, to inflict his tongue and his teeth upon her puckered skin. And she would no doubt whine ceaselessly.

His fingers closed. The crackle of paper seemed uncommonly loud in the quiet. He followed the noise, found the note still in his hand. If the angel had not sent it, who had?

"Does Lord Rothchilde know about you?" the strange woman asked, taking from her pocket a sprig of garlic and holding it before her as she backed into the door.

"Are these the kinds of questions they teach servants these days? More's the pity."

Dante held his ground.

"I came here to discern what kind of… man you are, and to beg your aid in my lady's escape."

"I'm afraid I have no such aid to offer."

"You are Lord Rothchilde's ally? One of his…"

"There is no love lost between your angel's betrothed and myself, I must admit. Still, and all in all, I cannot help you."

"Perhaps Lady Rothchilde was mistaken in her allusions to your honor?"

"Maybe you are too inquisitive for your own good."

The woman nodded, held the garlic higher. "I would do anything to help my lady."

"Even if it means asking the likes of me to participate?"

"Even such a thing as that."

Dante's body beat with a strange irregularity. His feigned nonchalance was wearing thin.

"Lady Rothchilde said you exhibited honor about all else, though you would feign to its opposite," the woman said. "She did not tell us you were a demon. That was not made clear. We knew not that you are a creature of the night. The stench of what you are pervades this place."

"Might you say how you come by such knowledge? How you have judged my countenance so quickly?"

"My village was small, though not isolated from the rest of the land. We were taught whom to fear, well enough."

"Yet the angel's father would sell her to such a creature as you're discussing?"

"Her father is dead. Lord Rothchilde saw to that."

"Ah."

"Lady Rothchilde does not know about you?" the woman said. "She was wrong in her estimation of your character?"

"Wrong?" Dante repeated, closing in on the garlic, fortifying himself against the discomfort such a small plant could inflict.

"Lady Rothchilde told me you were the only one to be trusted here, and that you would help us."

The old woman was close enough for Dante to have caught her. But his arms would not move. His head would not turn to follow her progress toward the door—toward freedom from what might have otherwise overtaken her. It wasn't the garlic that caused his lethargy. It was the sun.

The woman's heavy-lidded eyes were veiled by the scarf she wore over her head. She had the door open. "Perhaps Lady Rothchilde does know about you. Perhaps love is indeed blind."

Dante knew he should stop her. The saggy old defiant thing knew about him, or thought she knew. Secrets like this could be pried out of an old woman. Their bones snapped like twigs when pressure was applied.

So, why did he hold back? Was it because she watched over the angel? Because she had real concern for the angel's plight? If so, then she would merely be in the way. His way.

But then… she was such an old woman. Not a worthy adversary. She knew nothing for certain. She knew no one at Rothchilde's fortress. She would never be chosen as an appetizer by anyone in Rothchilde's party. No one here would care about her fear. Therefore, she had some time left.

"Your angel will not escape," Dante said, stifling a yawn. "Rothchilde is thorough, if nothing else."

But his words echoed in the cavernous room.

The old woman had gone.

"You desire me to go after her? Detain her?" Dante's steward asked.

Dante's gaze settled on him. "Was there not something odd about her?"

"Decidedly so. Now, will you drink before your rest?"

"You have someone in mind?"

"I have someone in the next room."

Dante turned his head, heard no sounds, looked back in question.

"Lord Rothchilde chose his fortress well. The walls are thick."

Dante nodded. "And Lord Rothchilde will begin to miss his servants and other minions who lose their way in the night. Though, I suppose, those absences will not be as noticeable with such a gathering as this."

Dante tossed off his shirt and crawled onto the bed. He closed his eyes, not wanting to sleep. Sleep brought visions of blurred white flesh. Faces came and went, as always. Victims. Names from the past. Yet the hunger was upon him. His shaft still throbbed with the remembrance of Elizabeth's willingness, and the moist heat between her thighs. Or was the throb leftover from his sighting of the angel in her bower?

He wanted to sleep the dreamless sleep of his kind, not bothered by visions and contemplations. Not bothered by fantasies of wings or the scent of Elizabeth's hair. Such things should be left to mortal men.

"I will dream of the angel," he muttered to himself. "A much simpler pastime."

After all, how many delightful ways might he invent to snare her?

How could an old crone protect her, really, when her fate was sealed?

"I'll have this angel, all right." Elizabeth had most assuredly seen to that. He would take up her challenge and return triumphant. He would part the angel's fur… Surely angels possessed the same attributes real women did?

Then he would slap his cock into her tight little slit until she begged for mercy, or begged for more.

Upon that pleasant thought, he drifted.

 

"Steward?"

Dante rose to his elbow. The room was dark. He had overslept.

"Steward?" he called again as a sound came from the vicinity of the door. A bolt sliding into place?

Senses alert, Dante's surroundings formed around him. Stone walls, draped and shuttered windows, tousled bed-sheets. The room's single candle, now spent, sputtered softly. From some distance came the sound of a thin trickle of water seeping through cracks.

He inhaled, sat up, held back a spasm of distaste. Someone had brought garlic back into the room. The odor invaded the quiet, chasing away the remnants of sleep.

"What is it you want here?" Dante said, voice ringing through the thick, moist dark. "Have you nothing more imaginative to offer than insidiousness?"

A flash of white crossed his eye, hovered in the corner, then moved forward. Slightly. Enough.

"How did you get away, angel?" Dante said, recognizing her scent beyond the garlic she would use to ensure her safety.

Muscles gathering to attention, Dante's eyes opened wider in surprised disbelief. Quite phantomlike, a woman glided toward the bed, head bowed, eyes hidden. A humming began in Dante's ears as he stared. His chest tightened.

The angel looked up. Even in the last of the light, Dante could see the curious brilliance in the gaze. But… these were not the eyes of the angel. He knew these eyes.

His wits were momentarily eclipsed by the stink of the plant. His sight dimmed considerably. His eyes stung. Bloody hell! Who first considered that a plant could inflict so much damage on a beast? Did they try other talismans before settling on this particular one? Did everyone at Rothchilde castle know of its properties? One would assume, after all, that this particular host would have seen to clear the halls of it.

"My dearest Dante," Elizabeth said, voice low-toned and earthy.

From his position on the bed, Dante looked up to eye Elizabeth levelly. "You are well enough to move about, Elizabeth?"

"Out of necessity," Elizabeth returned, working to keep her face passive and her expression hidden, knowing she would succeed only if she adhered to her plan. Yet the smile Dante offered was devastating. The sight of him in the bed made her heart lurch.

"You have the smell of her about you," Dante said.

"You recognize her scent already, then?"

"Are you unfamiliar with the senses we beasts possess, you who have lived within your brother's inner circle?"

"Scent before sight," Elizabeth quoted. "Even in the night."

Dante's eyes went to her throat, she noticed—to the black velvet ribbon of jewels she wore tightly wound around her neck to hide the wounds he had made. He signaled her closer.

"Why does her essence linger upon you?" he asked.

"I have brought you a token."

Dante watched as Elizabeth sat on the foot of his bed. She was dressed in a dazzling display of green brocade trimmed with ermine. In spite of the richness she exhibited, her skin was alabaster-white. When she blinked, there was hesitation.

"Token?" Dante narrowed his own eyes. Elizabeth's necklace shone in the candlelight. Egg-shaped emerald stones flared with an inner darkness. But the flare and exuberance of her countenance masked a remaining translucency, he thought. Her green eyes were feverish.

"Another reward?" he asked as pangs of guilt reassembled.

"You did not kill me," Elizabeth said. "You do not profess to love me, but you let me live. Then you went to her."

"Do you have eyes in the back of your head, dearest Elizabeth?"

Dante got to his knees on the covers and crawled toward her. Elizabeth did not draw back, as he half-expected her to do. She showed no signs of retreat.

"Where is she?" Dante asked. "What has been done to her?"

"You do not know these things?" Elizabeth countered.

"Actually, I have not put my mind to it."

"Why ever not?"

"Is it not a waste of time, when you will tell me?"

Elizabeth laughed, coughed, put both hands to her throat and closed her eyes. Dante reached her side.

"Careful, Dante," Elizabeth whispered. "It will seem as though you care."

"I do care."

Elizabeth attempted a smile, failed to affix it.

"What is it you expected me to do?" Dante asked.

"Reason that it is not worth the effort. That she is not worth the effort."

"Whatever effort are you speaking of?"

The green eyes accosted him suddenly. Dante frowned. Was Elizabeth's secret that she was a witch? Could she see down into him so completely as to know what he might be thinking? Had she cast a spell upon him? Used the ancient incantations to keep him unbalanced?

For what purpose?

He considered this question.

Elizabeth leaned in to rest her head on his shoulder. Her soft masses of curls brushed against his face. So soft. So pale. The hue of summer wheat, an image only remembered in the deepest recesses of his mind. The darkest recesses of his mind.

This reminder was uncomfortable. He had made a vow. He would keep her safe.

But he was so hungry.

Elizabeth's head came up, realigning on her smooth regal neck with a swanlike grace.

"You told her I am honorable?" Dante said. "And that I would help her."

"And you turned her down."

"Was it a game, then? A tournament of wills?"

"Something perilously close."

"Did you send the old woman?"

"Yes."

"To tempt me further?"

"To see if you would keep your promise."

"What promise would this be, exactly?"

Elizabeth's eyes flashed in place of a reply.

"Hadn't I done enough to you already?" Dante asked.

"Not enough, by far, it seems."

In an attempt to dissect her remark, Dante tilted his head. "You are speaking of love?"

"Do you love my brother's choice?"

"Would you keep me from others so that you can continue not loving me in the future?"

"So that I can keep you close, whatever there is or isn't between us."

"Selfishness doesn't become you, my green-eyed challenger."

"Do not insult my intelligence, Dante. Look upon these walls. This is where I live."

Dante felt the lines of a fresh frown deepen the furrow on his forehead. Was she being so subtle as to have made clear her position in her brother's nest? She was perhaps the only woman to remain outside of Alan Rothchilde's clutches, while existing in the very center of the debauchery and evil.

How did she accomplish this?

Back to that.

"Elizabeth…"

"I am a woman, Dante, in case you have not noticed."

His frown deepened further. "I have noticed."

Ask her, he thought. Just ask her how a mere woman might survive here amid her brother's lair. Wasn't that what he had come to Rothchilde's castle in search of? The knowledge of who this sister was? And how she withstood all this? Were these answers not the reason for being here, where danger reigned even for such a creature as himself?

"You touched her," Elizabeth remarked before he could ask anything.

And Elizabeth's intake of breath caused her breasts to swell above the heart-shaped neckline of her gown.

Throb. Pulse. Rise in his breeches. But this was not supposed to happen. He did not love her, he reminded himself. He was incapable of such emotion. In all of his years on this godforsaken ground, he had never felt the need to love.

"You left her because she was protected, and out of necessity rather than any choice you might have deemed to make," Elizabeth charged.

Guards. Garlic. Hindrances, one and all, all right, Dante thought. But those things had not unnerved him.

"Now who is insulting whose intelligence?" he returned.

"He knows about you," Elizabeth said. "Need I tell you how my brother knows?"

Dante grinned. Once again her breasts swelled above her bodice, along with her anger—though she kept a loose leash on that anger. Her breasts were luminous, plump with life and longing. In turn, he longed to hold them, lick them, caress them. He reached out, ran a finger across the delicate bones beneath her chin, and fought off a shudder of delight. No, not delight. Something more.

"I do hope that scrawny lad was not your brother's intended bedtime snack," Dante said. "I can understand how this might have upset him."

A patch of pink the size of a thumbnail flushed Elizabeth's cheeks. Fascinating, Dante thought. Demure, despite her challenge. Alluring. He barely noticed the garlic now. He barely thought about the angel.

Perhaps his hunger was tainting his viewpoint.

"You needn't bother telling me anything about your brother," he said. "I know him well enough."

"Do you?" Elizabeth countered. "Then you know she told him."

"Actually, I reasoned that she might be too frightened to do anything of the kind."

"Just as you reasoned that the promise I extracted from you was a joke?"

"On the contrary, I believe you knew your warnings would challenge me to go to her, to see for myself, up close, what caused your brother to choose her." Dante eyed Elizabeth closely. "Was I wrong in assuming this?"

"Yet you did nothing to her."

"There is an abundance of time left to change the outcome, is there not?"

"Garlic had been placed in her room, Dante. Perhaps its effects are not lost on you?" Elizabeth tried another smile, this time with a fair amount of success, though her lips did not long remain upturned. "I placed the garlic there," she said.

"Ah. I believed it was your brother."

"I removed the guard, so that you wouldn't."

"I had already met a scrawny lad."

Elizabeth could not fully hide her distaste over this comment, Dante saw. He said, "You sent the note?"

"The note was a warning, not an invitation. Had you stayed but a while longer in the tower, you would never have left it."

"You would warn me, and at the same time make a present of the angel?"

"A trial, merely. A test. My brother's choice is no gift."

"A test of what? The sharpness of my wits? My fighting skills?"

Yes, and in which way had he failed, Dante wondered? What was she getting at? He hadn't taken the angel. He had not dragged her from the bed and clamped his teeth to her neck, beating Alan Rothchilde to it. Elizabeth had been victorious in this, surely? And he had allowed her victory.

The look in Elizabeth's eyes was stirring up something deep within him. Something discomfiting. The beat in his throat had become a nagging question. His thirst was now a viable craving.

Then an idea slipped in beneath the other thoughts. A new scent came to him, stronger than Elizabeth's, mingling with Elizabeth's. Token. She had mentioned a token. Something belonging to the angel, perhaps?

He looked at Elizabeth questioningly.

She was no longer smiling.

Dante's lungs were near to bursting, though he supposed he did not actually breathe. Habit, maybe, that he inhaled through his nose? Old traditions were so very hard to break.

"Yes. I brought you something," Elizabeth said.

Dante's limbs took on the burn of being internally heated. Perspiration broke out on his brow. He could discern the reason, well enough, of course. Though the stink of the garlic pervaded, swirling through the air, tainting everything, it masked a thing beyond it.

Elizabeth had brought the angel.

Here.

To him.

Elizabeth watched his reaction, felt near to swooning. Weakness pervaded her body, still. She was drained, suffocating. After everything she had offered, Christopher Dante dared to look beyond her now.

With a limp hand, she signaled.

Surprised, speechless, Dante stared. The angel, in a blur of white, stepped into view. Simultaneously, Elizabeth reached for his hand. She placed it across the exposed portion of her breast, held it there for several breaths, then drew her soft, full lushness completely free of the cloth surrounding it.

There were others in the room, Dante knew suddenly. Not just the angel. Dark shapes drifted in the shadows, in the corners, near the door. And Elizabeth, seemingly impervious to them and to the angel's presence, molded his fingers around her.

"You were right," she whispered. "Innocence is alluring."

Her fingers squeezed his. "You are right in that I have never given in to the weaknesses that bind other women. I have not been allowed such leeway. But I was innocent once, and untried. You, of all… people… know this for a fact."

She manipulated his hand so that his palm rubbed across her raised pink nipple. "Imagine me here, amid the nightmares of my brother's court. Imagine what a nightmare I have been living, Dante. Until you came."

The emphasis she placed on the last word was not lost to him. Elizabeth leaned in, ran her mouth across his.

"My brother searches for her as we speak," she said. "He will, of course, find her before long."

Her lips lingered on his, slid softly across his as she spoke. "You must help her. But not for the reasons you assume. First, there is something we must do. There is a thing she can do."

Elizabeth drew his head downward, so that his mouth rested upon the nipple that lay exposed, so that he could no longer see the angel. Above him, Elizabeth leaned her head back, whispered, "Drink."

He was ravenous, nearly insane with hunger. But his vow not to injure Elizabeth further rang in his ears, alongside the beat of her heart. Meaning to speak, he opened his mouth. His tongue touched her skin. She sighed, then her hand went to his breeches. She had found him hard. Decidedly hard. Deliciously hard.

"Yes," Elizabeth whispered. "You know."

Affected by her brash invitation and the slickness of her oiled skin, Dante half wondered why she had brought the woman he called his angel here to watch. His tongue, seemingly of its own volition, slipped sideways, over the mound of her breast. But he did not draw her into his mouth. Instead, he straightened. He looked into her eyes.

"You can smell innocence," Elizabeth said. "Can you not?"

"What are you doing?" Dante whispered.

"It is too late, don't you see?" Elizabeth said. "He noticed. He will come for you."

Dante was confused. Allowing Elizabeth to turn her head, he followed her attention across the room—to the angel. But Elizabeth's faint cough brought him back.

"So you will kill me? Is that it?" he said. "You will give her to me as a parting gift before you let your brother have me?"

Elizabeth was deadly serious. "I told you I would never let my brother kill you."

Dante laughed. "Then you will do so yourself? How many men have you brought with you, dear one? Or do you assume the angel will keep me so occupied that I might fail to notice the plan you have in mind?"

His laughter subsided. "Does she know what you are planning?"

"Oh yes, my dearest Dante," Elizabeth whispered in his ear. "She knows some of it. You did not actually believe a woman could lack both the power and intellect to fool you?"

Dante studied Elizabeth's oval face. "Whatever do you mean?" he asked as the angel took a step forward.

The angel's eyes were downcast, as he had first seen them. But her pose was not one of meek compliance. It was merely tolerance. He watched avidly as she took a second step.

She wore a gown of pink. Not the white he had imagined, but the color of a carnation. The color of a rose that hadn't the benefit of the sun to deepen its lividness. The gown seemed to float in heavy pieces, failing to denote the lightness or airiness he had imagined. Long cords of rope dangled from her shoulders from a collar around her neck, like an overlong necklace.

Dante swallowed, stunned. It was not rope that dangled, but an intricate braiding of garlic stems.

His hand went to his mouth in an involuntary gesture. Mesmerized, he stared harder.

The garlic was also wound into a cornet, and intertwined in the black hair that hung to the angel's waist. His limbs tingled. His head swam as all that garlic came closer, as the angel came closer. The puzzlement of it kept him still.

"I do not wish to demean you," Elizabeth whispered into his ear, and yet the words seemed to come from his own mind rather than from any external source.

"I merely question the validity of your judgment," she continued. "I question the intelligence of my brother, who thinks he can deal with a creature like this."

The candle sputtered. Elizabeth lifted a hand, and another candle was placed in it, wick lit, before Dante could even see what had happened.

A pool of light bathed Elizabeth, tossing long shadows across her face. The expression she wore was one of determination. The flush had disappeared from her cheeks, leaving her wan. Though Dante wanted to speak, his attention moved to the angel. His own limbs felt heavy. His head felt light.

"You are honorable," Elizabeth said. "I can think of no other way to end this."

"End?" Dante intoned, seeing now that the angel was beyond colorless. The pale dress seemed invariably darker by contrast.

"She will not willingly help us," Elizabeth explained. "She is beyond helping anyone, beyond anything you or I could imagine."

"What is this?" Dante said. But his hands began to shake with the nearness of the angel and her heavily odored, garlic-laced raiment. He could not lift his arms.

No, it was something else that bothered him, more potent than the garlic. He looked up with a ripple of shock to find that a cross had been hung on the post of his bed. Its silver facets gleamed in the candlelight.

Dante swallowed. Eyes wide, he faced Elizabeth.

"You thought her innocent, my dearest Dante," Elizabeth said. "They all did at first. It took a woman to see through the ruse. I tried to warn you."

Was this indeed a joke? Dante wondered, his mind grasping at anything that might explain or shed some light.

Was something wrong with the angel?

"Touch me," Elizabeth whispered, vying for his attention, demanding compliance. Her voice was silk, surrounding a harder substance. Her green eyes were once again flecked with gold.

Secrets.

Dante's hand went to her cheek. Elizabeth covered his fingers with hers.

Secrets… there in her touch, in her paleness, in each shallow breath she took.

"Bloody hell!" he exclaimed as she separated one of his fingers from the others on his right hand and pressed it lightly to her lips. "Elizabeth," he whispered, feeling the throb below his waist, fighting the urges she had always brought out in him, despite the best of plans.

He watched with fascination as Elizabeth's lips parted. He nearly rose from the bed when she inserted his finger inside of her hot, wet mouth. He nearly burst as she drew on the finger, sucking it inside of her lips, covering it with her tongue.

He could barely move—caught between the garlic and the shadow of the silver cross that stretched across the sheets, between the angel's mysterious presence and Elizabeth's careful ministrations. Yet he felt curiously removed from those hindrances. One part of his body was reacting, despite the circumstances. Something seemed live enough… in his pants.

You will listen to me, Elizabeth sent silently to Dante. I have not kept myself free of the nest for no reason.

She tugged slowly on his hand, and his finger slid from her mouth, between her teeth, over her fevered lips. He was looking at her so strangely.

I have never interfered in my brother's pursuits, she told him. Until now, Dante. Until I met you.

He had some residual strength left, she knew. And she could take no chances. He had to be weakened more. Enough.

Climbing onto her knees beside him on the bed, she took his shirt into her hands. From her pocket she pulled forth a dagger and slit the white cloth down the center.

"You cannot kill me with that," Dante said.

His speech was slow, hesitant, Elizabeth noted. She smiled grimly and placed both of her hands on his chest.

"I don't mean to kill you," she told him, mouth moving over his skin in lazy circles, her hair falling across his lap. "I mean to have my way with you, and then some."

"Have you not chosen an odd way of going about it?"

"Yes. I suppose I have."

She felt his skin ripple. Pleasure, in spite of his defiance. Excitement, in spite of the garlic and the cross. It would have been much easier if he hadn't gone to sleep fully dressed, she thought. How long could she keep control of the thing that stood not far from the bedside?

But then, Dante's head was back when she looked at him. His dark, dangerous eyes were closed. She ran her tongue down to his waistband, heard him groan. Perhaps he was weaker than she imagined. Perhaps…

Confident now, with some of her fears eased, she glanced up again. Her heart skipped inside of her chest.

He was staring down at her.

There was nothing weak or remotely passive in the keen expression he wore.

"Perhaps," Dante said, taking her shoulders into his hands with a grip that made her wince, "you need a little help?"

Four guards rushed to Elizabeth's side. Dante held them back with a hand raised in warning. "Be gone. Do you not see that your mistress and I have things to do?"

"They will go nowhere on your command," Elizabeth said breathlessly.

"They are not here to protect you from me, surely?" Dante's eyes slid to the band at her neck. Did she think he would finish what he had started? Might she assume he would drain her dry this time, if pressed to the limits of his arousal?

If she thought so, why would she be here now? Why taunt him?

"They are here to watch over her," Elizabeth replied.

Dante's eyes went to the angel. "Whatever for?"

His question lingered in the stuffy air. He spoke again to Elizabeth. "You have trussed her up to protect her from me?"

Breath. Silence. A long stretch of unspoken excuses. Yet so curious, Dante thought. This new and mysterious Elizabeth was so damned intriguing. Why hadn't he seen it before?

"Why doesn't the cross weaken you?" Elizabeth countered.

"I have made it a point never to give away secrets that matter."

"I am here to change that."

Unable to help himself, Dante smiled in surprise. "Did you bring her here to bargain with me?"

"I brought her here as a last resort."

"For what, might I ask?"

"Siring."

"What?"

"Is that not what you call it? Does one beast not sire another?"

"I do not follow your line of thought," Dante said, smile fading.

"Can you not? How unfortunate, since both of our lives are now at stake."

Dante sat back, gazed down at Elizabeth's ashen face. He glanced to the angel, whose eyes were still downcast. "What has she to do with this?" he asked.

But he didn't like the expression Elizabeth adopted. It was one of someone getting the better of another. It was Elizabeth thinking she had gotten the better of him.

Had he missed something?

What the bloody hell could it be?

She leaned closer to him again. She looked up at him and he could swear that some of the keenness had left her eyes. He could swear she was waiting, expecting something.

He watched as she got to her feet on the covers, and as she lifted the cross down from its place. A need to back away nearly overwhelmed him as she brought the cross to him. With a fascination too great to retreat from, he stayed where he was as she pressed the silver cross to his chest.

The odor of burnt flesh filled the room. Dante's mouth opened in a silent protest. The ache was paramount, but he did not move.

"Are you not angry with me for doing this to you?" Elizabeth whispered to him, eyes wide and staring intently into his.

He took hold of her wrist, shook it. The cross dropped to the floor with a sharp, metallic sound. With a graceful bending of his elbow, he brought Elizabeth closer.

"I am not angry," he said, lips forming the words slowly, precisely, above the soft hiss of his scorched flesh.

"Then perhaps this will do," Elizabeth said, picking up her dagger, running its sharp tip down the length of his arm.

Dante's skin opened beneath the pressure of the razor-sharp knife. A thin line of blood gathered and then began to spill. Dark red liquid ran down his arm. A drop of it hit the sheets with a dull thud.

In an instant, he had Elizabeth on her back. Arms pinned above her head, he looked into her face. "I repeat, Elizabeth: What are you doing?"

Her lips were on his before he finished his query. Back arched, arms straining above her, Elizabeth rose to meet him.

There was a noise in the distance. A low growl. But Dante paid no heed. Nothing could get in the way of this moment. Not even the angel.

There was a score to settle.

Warm lips covered his, drew on his. Elizabeth's tongue, moist, usually compliant, darted across his teeth, then retreated. The sharpness of his teeth, rivaling her dagger's edge, would have startled her, hurt her, Dante knew. Yet she came on again, undaunted.

Blood spattered into his mouth. Elizabeth's blood. The scent of it filled him, sent his insides scrambling. The taste—thick, rich, a taste like no other thing—unleashed a portion of his inner beast.

Hold back, he reasoned as Elizabeth's mouth clung to his.

Hold back.

But questions vied for his focus. His mind whirled. Did Elizabeth know no better than to tempt him in this way? Couldn't she reason how fine the line was that he walked? Blood was the key. Blood was his existence.

"Dear God!" Her hands caressed him with disturbing motions. Blissful ministrations. A murmur rose to her throat, soft, like her touch. Thrilling. Utterly beguiling.

He caressed her throat, slid his fingers over the velvet band of jewels she wore as a collar. The thing tore easily. Priceless jewels fell to the floor, discarded. Out of the way.

In full evidence were the two punctures he had made. There, near where the blood flowed its fullest. Beneath her jaw. Beneath her ear. The wounds were raised, raw, the flesh around them blackened and bruised. He had hurt her. It must hurt her, still. How brave she was for facing him after that.

"If there were actually to be a God, surely he would strike now, for doing this to you. For wanting to do it again," he whispered.

The two raised bumps of her wounds were an invitation to the most inhuman of actions. He had to keep the passions bound. He had to fight his very nature now. Elizabeth had become more than a mere vessel. Much more than that.

"What is it you have become?" he asked her throatily, rhetorically, vocalizing his uncertainty. "What do you mean to me, so suddenly? Are you a pathway to the truth? A mortal soul to balance the hole where my own soul once had been?"

He shook his head, going backwards against the tide of his desire. "No. If there were a God, the beasts would not be allowed to roam. There would be no place for what hides in the shadows. You are right to torment me."

"Dante."

The utterance of his name momentarily stopped the questions. He fell back into the moment. Into his own sweet torment. Heat engulfed him, spreading from Elizabeth's body to his, through her clothes, through the thin bit of air separating them. Heat. Maybe not the sun, but similar. Golden in feel. Bright. He longed for this sun, her sun. He longed to take her brightness in. He cursed the night.

Creamy skin moved beneath his hands, his cool fingers.

Wine-tinted lips, full, lush, moved against his with the murmur of an incantation designed to drive him mad with desire. It mattered not what Elizabeth said, what she whispered, he told himself.

With a slow, measured gesture, he slid his tongue around the rim of her mouth. Do not go further, he warned himself. Do not go there. You will be sorry. Nothing will be left. No comfort.

No comfort.

His hands found her breasts, moved over the luxuriousness of her gown, seeking to bolster the warmth. A breath later, a mere heartbeat, the cloth barrier came apart at the seams with a sound that split the night and sent his senses soaring.

Elizabeth's heart beat irregularly, loudly. He should have covered his ears, blocked out the sound. Instead, he moved to the rhythm of that beat, as if it were his own heart pounding. He explored her possessively. Pleasure arrived in waves.

"Now look what we have done," he crooned to her.

The pulse of her heart beat against his palm as his hand lay upon her chest. Able to hear her blood's frantic journey, Dante closed his eyes, recalled what the mingling of her fluids with his had been like. Lightheadedness returned. Extreme hunger.

Suddenly and inexplicably haunted by Elizabeth Rothchilde, by everything about her, he got to his knees. With her discarded dagger in his fingers, he slit her velvet skirts from their laces. The sound was muffled, erotic.

Arms wrapped around her nakedness, he lifted her from the dark green mass that had clothed her. He stretched her long-limbed nakedness out on the bed. He burrowed his head against her soft white belly and bit her gently, just above her right hip bone. The merest dot of blood rose to the surface. Dark red, on white. She muffled a cry. He did the same.

"Yes, look," Dante repeated, "at us."

Again a sound floated toward him, low and resonant. Again he let it go. The angel and her plight did not matter now. Nor did it matter how she looked on. Perhaps the angel would learn something of use for her wedding bed…

Downward he went, lips hovering over every inch of Elizabeth's quivering smoothness. A nip here, there, with his teeth, and then he bit down oh-so-softly to break the skin. Leaving a trail. Marring the beauty.

She allowed this. Was it her victory over the angel she needed? Is that why she had the angel standing by?

He moved on to her thighs. Rounded. Gloriously unflawed. Hot to the touch. Flames to the tongue, fueling the fires raging within him.

Elizabeth.

Damn you.

Scooping both hands beneath her buttocks, he elevated her upward, high off the covers, needing to hold her and feel her next to him. Her legs opened, as they had opened for him before. Yet this motion felt new. Different. The unmistakable scent of musk, of flowering womanhood in a time of need, came to him on his intake of breath.

Dear… Elizabeth.

What do you have in store for me?

One thrust of his tongue to part her light brown fur, to beckon at the door to her desire, and she stiffened. But he would not relent. Could not. She had started this. She was expecting this.

He took the pink petals into his mouth, sucked lightly at first, then with a harder draw. Elizabeth fluttered, spoke, saying he knew not what. Undulating legs the color of pearls closed around his back as she rose to meet his torturous, treacherous mouth. Her heartbeat quickened, pounding in frantic thumps that resonated just beneath her skin, and near to her silky womb's entrance. He could see the beat move her.

Moistness flowed to meet him. He drank in the nectar of the inferno, darting his tongue across her sensitive threshold, listening to her little cries.

And it was not enough.

He would show her that he could satisfy her and leave no doubts to fill his mind.

He hauled himself upward, unleashing his engorged cock as he did so. Before Elizabeth could open her eyes, he was inside of her savory heat with a smooth, lubricated shove.

"I cannot bear it," Elizabeth said in a voice as raw as the wounds on her neck.

" 'Siring,' you said," he whispered to her. "Yet this is as much of me as I can give. You are living, breathing flesh. Your womb will never carry my heirs. I can have no heirs this way."

But then, she must already know this, he thought.

"My touch will not heal you," he said. "My touch can burn, harm, maim. I am an abomination. I am darkness, you are light. I am merely shadow to your flame."

As if in deference to his statement, his hips rose, flattened, and pressed into hers. His prick slid deeper inside of her, was welcomed with the familiar dampness.

"By God," he said hoarsely, "if I am an abomination, what might you be—you who crave this unholy attention?"

Another shove. Deeper. Truer. And he went spiraling back to the one word he distrusted. Secrets.

He would get those secrets from Elizabeth. He would force them out of her, fuck them out of her. She would open her mouth and out the words would tumble. He would kiss her as he drank them in, as her power transferred to him.

His engorged, unsatisfied cock plunged again into her velvety depths. And again. It felt good. It was a start.

"Tell me," he said, looking into her eyes as he withdrew himself almost completely, and as he dipped back inside the pink petals, barely, lightly. "What do you need?"

Without awaiting her reply, he forced his shaft into her lushness with a slap of his hips against hers. He repeated the action, building in speed, listening to the sound of their bodies meeting.

Elizabeth's fingers curled on the covers. Her head turned side to side. He would take her soon, he knew—down past desire, down past rational reasoning, and into his realm. The realm of the beast. The seducer. The cheat.

For he, along with the other things that clung to the shadows, had cheated death. And now, he had become death.

And after everything he could have imagined, was death what Elizabeth ultimately wanted? Did this beautiful Rothchilde want to die?

He paused. She moved, wrapping herself around him from the inside out, adding fire to fire. Her body swallowed him up, sucked him in, held him there. She said, "I want it all, Dante."

Elizabeth's skin glistened with perspiration, though the room was cold. The cold of a tomb. Her voice was desperate. "I demand that you give it to me, or I can have no peace."

"Do not invite me in," Dante warned, understanding dawning, rage building. "Not beyond the flesh. Not beyond this."

Hot fingers gripped his back, his shoulders, then his buttocks, hanging on, urging him on.

"All of it," Elizabeth said. "It is why I have come."

Dante shook his head, shuddered with the thought. Elizabeth's face came closer. She held onto his rigid back. Her chin was lifted, her head tilted to expose her wounds. He could smell the sweetness, remember the taste.

Her blood had been free-flowing. Thick. She had given it to him willingly, and he was an idiot for not seeing what she wanted from the first. Who better than Elizabeth Rothchilde, sister of Alan the Terrible, would know just what it would take to die? How easy it could be for life to drain away?

Who better than she would know how difficult it would be for any creature such as himself to give up, once the taste and smell of a mortal had been sampled? It was her blood that sang to him now, dammit all to hell. That was her hold, her wild card. This was the power she wielded over him. It was the Blood Lure. Her mad face had taken on the pallor of the Undead already.

"Yes," was the sound that escaped from Elizabeth's mouth as he studied her.

Yes, the shadows urged in a swell of dank, fetid draft. She requests this. She wants this. Is it not what you are? Is it not what you do?

He wavered on arms that had begun to shake, wondering who in those shadows had spoken, and if he should listen.

The flicker of the candle seemed uncommonly loud to Elizabeth's ears. Louder than her heart's beat. Louder than the silence that lay heavily upon the cavernous room now that Dante had hesitated.

She was afraid to look away, afraid to look anywhere but into the dark, bottomless eyes that sought and held hers. Though Dante was still erect and firmly embedded inside of her, though his hips remained molded to hers, his eyes had clouded over.

Was the thing Dante had called an angel, so securely wrapped in her garlic streamers, calling to him in a way only creatures of their kind could hear? Could Dante truly not comprehend the essence of this queen of the damned that her brother had chosen?

"I can see down into your soul. Beyond the surface things," Dante said to her, moving slightly, letting her know he maintained full control of his body and his actions.

Elizabeth forced a grin, felt like doing anything but smiling. "I assumed it was another part of your anatomy that concerned you."

"Then you value my other talents too little."

"I have no delusions about your talents, or your desires."

"I will not play this game, Elizabeth. If Lady Wallace desires to be rid of this castle and her impending marriage, what is it to you?"

"More than you seem able to guess," Elizabeth said, arching her back slightly, elevating her rosy breasts, breath escaping when Dante's focus drifted downward.

"Yet you can have her now," Elizabeth added in a tone of challenge. "And you are inside of me."

Dante's eyes came back to hers. Not clouded over—at least on the surface.

"I offered her to you on a silver plate," Elizabeth said, testing him further. "Am I but a nibble, and she the main course?"

"Why is she here?"

"I told you, Dante. She is here out of necessity. It is your honor my brother will take from me this night. I cannot have that. I will not allow it. I must force your hand. It is the only way."

"What part does she play, Elizabeth? I mean to know."

"Then you shall, my dearest Dante. If you must. But first you must make a choice. You—"

"Ah. A choice." Dante withdrew from their intimate connection, disallowing her final remark. He turned on the bed to stare beyond the candlelight, covered meagerly in a shred of green velvet that had once been a part of her skirt.

Elizabeth could not move. She lay back with her legs still slightly parted, feeling the cold air return, suppressing a shudder. She watched as Dante signaled for her guards to step back from the dark-haired creature they hovered near. The guards obeyed.

Dante's eyes flicked to the creature, then back to Elizabeth's face. Once again a frown marred his pensive, chiseled features.

"You did not kill me," Elizabeth said to him.

"And you imagine it was honor that stopped me?" he returned.

"You did not try to take her. You did not even try, Dante."

Dante's furrow deepened. His eyes darted back to the dark-haired creature. "I thought her the most beautiful woman I had ever seen."

Elizabeth felt her heart slide against her ribs. She experienced a moment of what seemed very much like defeat.

"It is her power," she said. "And the reason my brother brought her here."

Dante wore a puzzled look now. He knew something of this, Elizabeth thought. He did not know enough of it to save himself from what was happening. Time was running out.

"You may sense her innocence, Dante, but it is not what you think. She is not what you think."

"Shall we cut the bonds you have placed upon her and see?" Dante countered.

"You would choose her, then?"

"If I had chosen her, you would not be here, I think."

Elizabeth lifted her shoulders and sat up slowly, careful not to move too quickly, thinking that hope now stirred where shadows had begun to dwell. Dante had said was. The creature was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Dante caught hold of her right ankle before she could straighten. He gave her an inquisitive look.

"What is this, Elizabeth? What are these marks on the bottom of your foot?"

He ran his fingers over the bumps—old wounds scarred over. She flinched, not from pain but from the discomfort of a secret partially exposed.

His eyes were on her. His fingers stopped exploring. "My God," he whispered, as though it had been hidden text he'd found and read. "How long, Elizabeth? How long has your brother been cutting his teeth on you? How long have you been prisoner here?"

He looked up. "How could I not see what this angel is?"

Elizabeth's eyes searched his with a sudden seriousness.

"How long?" Dante demanded, feeling his rage rise, feeling his strength return in direct proportion to it. "I want to hear it, Elizabeth."

"Because you would save me now, Dante?" Elizabeth said. "The damsel in need fuels the mystery?"

"Why did you not tell me of this?"

"Why did you deserve to know?"

Dante's head thudded with a dull ache. He was not certain if it was Elizabeth's retort or the degree of his hunger that produced the discomfort.

He stood, turned to the angel.

"The nunnery?" he said to Elizabeth over his shoulder.

"Deemed by her family to be the safest place to keep her."

Dante grinned briefly at the suddenness of the ill news. "Of course. The nuns would keep locked up a woman sought by the devil, would they not?"

He waved Elizabeth's protest away without looking at her. "It is what I thought when you first told me the tale, though I can imagine another twist on it now."

The angel was within reach, eyes still downcast, arms bound behind her back. The stench of the garlic was overwhelming. She was wrapped tightly in the stuff, inundated by the odorous weed that was the bane of all creatures he shared a similar circumstance with.

He nearly laughed at his stupidity. Of course this angel would stand out in a crowd. Her lustrous, luminous skin, so pale, so fragile looking, so porcelain-thin, was the result of long years without the sun. The nuns had locked her away, all right, but not for her own good. For the good of others.

Laughter bubbled from his throat. The angel looked up. Her light eyes found his. "I thought you an angel," Dante said to her. "However, I was mistaken regarding the venue of the term, was I not? Is it an angel of death that stands all wrapped up before me? Was my attraction to you due to the fact that a part of me recognized what my mind could not firmly grasp?"

The low growl returned in place of a reply. The angel's face remained smoothly passive.

"Are you not the perfect match for Elizabeth's brother? A queen to his midnight kingship?" Dante asked her. "Do you require all this… hindrance to keep you in line after so long being locked away? I wonder what they fed you, how they kept you alive? And why they kept you alive? Surely the nuns could have killed you in the name of their God and all that is holy?"

"Wallace," Elizabeth whispered behind him.

Dante nodded. "Ah, yes. No doubt your keepers were paid handsomely by your father. Did he not have the heart to destroy his daughter, in the end? No matter what she had become?"

Dante thought backwards, to the tower room and the garlic-infested bed that had kept him away. Here, the angel was also a prisoner. Pity welled up inside of him, though he usually had little of it to spare for others like himself.

He turned to Elizabeth. "Have you done this to her?"

"Only to safeguard you," Elizabeth replied.

"Why? When I am like them?"

"You are different. Everyone knows this."

"And your brother? Why would he kill me? Not, I assume, just because I am better endowed and higher in the ridiculous aristocracy he thumbs his nose at anyway? Those things are false for our kind now. We go on. We endure."

No answer or comment came from Elizabeth. Dante moved to the bed, pulled Elizabeth up by her arms, and swung her around the back side of a heavy burgundy drape separating the room from another. Holding her against the stone wall with his body pressed to hers, he ran his fingers through her tangled honey-hued hair.

"You might like his attention. Your brother's. You might want to keep that attention to yourself, and prefer not sharing him with anyone," he said to her.

Elizabeth looked momentarily stricken, but rallied courageously. "And you might as easily die with a stake through your heart this minute. Five men are prepared to do it if I cannot."

Dante ran the tip of his nose down her cheek, still alerted to the perfume of her blood, aware of the state of her undress.

"You could have accomplished this many a night since I arrived," he remarked.

"Yes," she agreed.

"Yet you did not. Neither did you stake your dear brother, and yet look what he has done to you. Are you a prisoner here, Elizabeth? Have I stumbled into the Midnight Court to find you trapped within it?"

The growl came from nearby. Candlelight flickered eerily against the stone. Dante considered what the angel was trying to tell him, and gazed deeply into Elizabeth's green eyes.

"We must let her go," he said.

"She has already roused my brother."

"I will wager on that," Dante said wryly.

Elizabeth's lips upturned briefly.

"I would have saved you, had I known you earlier," Dante said. "I might have ridden off with you on a black steed at the crack of dawn, skirting the sun, basking in your arms in the darkness."

His smile returned. He could not help it. "However, I am not so certain you needed saving, for all the scars. I am not fully certain you would like dwelling in the shadows, for all the compliments you have bestowed upon me."

The gold flecks in Elizabeth's eyes danced.

"You mentioned that your brother would cringe and shake in his boots if he knew what you truly were about. You spoke the truth about this?" he said. "Why do I have the feeling I'm left empty-handed in knowing what it is that you want? You would now hide behind threats and fickleness and take the night's confidences back?"

"Use caution, Dante. I will only go so far, and they approach, even as we speak, stakes in hand."

"Yet you told me you were not going to kill me, and that your brother would not be allowed to do so. You would not allow him to kill me."

Her remark began to take on new meaning as he considered it.

"I am a woman of my word, just as you are a man of yours," she said.

"Nevertheless, I accepted your challenge, did I not?"

"You would not have lived if you had. You are here now because you didn't."

"And so you brought the challenge to me here? You brought the angel, all wrapped up, to see if I would betray you?"

"I brought your angel here to show you what she really is, and why my brother holds her so dear."

"I am all eyes, Elizabeth. And all ears."

"You did not kill me," she repeated.

"Yes, well perhaps I should have, thus liberating myself from this annoying game of yours."

Again, Elizabeth smiled. Her eyes shined in the near dark of the dank room that was his tomb, his salvation from the light. And suddenly, quite abruptly, Dante knew that she had become his salvation. Elizabeth Rothchilde had removed the tedium of the shadows, had dangled before him the promise of a fate he had not conceived of.

"Game," Elizabeth echoed. "Yes. I suppose you could think of it in no other terms."

Her face was infuriatingly earnest, Dante decided. Smooth, delicate, and lit from within. He had tried to spare her, attempted to keep her from this. From himself. And now she was smiling. Was this another victory for the mortal? The woman? The weaker sex?

Damn her hide. There was nothing weak about Elizabeth.

She stirred against him. She would be cold, of course. Chilled to the bone. Dante tore from his shoulders the remnants of his shirt and draped it around her neck, hesitating when his fingers touched her wounds.

"I don't kill for pleasure," he said before realizing he had spoken. "It is not much of a line separating me from the others of my kind. Still, it is somewhat of a line."

Elizabeth's eyes reeled him in. Her lips parted. "I brought her here," she said. "I found your angel for Alan. I hauled her out of the dungeons, relieving the nuns from their pact to protect the devil. I brought her to the devil himself and presented her with her fate—to escape mine."

Dante could not hide his surprise at this revelation. Seeing this, Elizabeth went on.

"It seems that I may not be the woman you thought I was, and that we all have things to hide."

Amen, Dante wanted to cry, even though he might have forgotten exactly what the damned word meant.

Elizabeth's hand was light on his—a puff of wind, so slender and colorless. Dante had to work to control himself from muttering more obscenities. There was a hardness to her expression he had not seen before. Yet another surprise.

"Do you know what the Midnight Courts are?" she asked him soberly.

"Every creature like me knows of them," Dante replied.

"You think you know. But you see what you want to see, and believe what you want to believe."

"I came here to find out for myself," Dante said.

"Yes. And you found me."

Dante grinned despite the change in her demeanor.

"It is well known that the Midnight Courts are gatherings of ostentation, debauchery, and greed," Elizabeth began. "Silver, gold, jewels, lust… an agenda that draws many."

"To their fates, as you have so aptly put it," Dante added. "Unless they are the intended creatures. The creatures the courts were designed for."

Elizabeth nodded.

"They were designed as traps, of course," Dante continued. "Creatures such as your brother brought the ignorant mortals here to trap and then feast upon them. The mortals were the supper, the entertainment, the embellishments; all of them fair game for any creature participating in a Midnight Court. Isn't that it?"

"It is what you were supposed to believe. But you see, my beautiful Dante, that is not what the Midnight Courts really are."

Elizabeth slid her hand to his face, caressed his cheek. Over the scent of the blood at her wrist, Dante caught a whiff of something more dangerous. It was the odor of excitement. Elizabeth was aroused.

Eyes locked to hers, he arched a brow in question. But a terrible idea occurred as Elizabeth's fingers moved to his bare shoulder, then dipped to his waist.

She was not the bait.

He was.

The idea took form as his skin moved beneath her touch. He voiced it.

"Ah," he sighed. " We are lured here. Not just the mortals. We are to be trapped, as well. Feast and then…"

"Die," Elizabeth said.

The idea was not so fantastical, Dante thought. It certainly was no more than his kind deserved. "We kill the mortals, and then your brother kills us. Less competition that way. More for himself. Perhaps he then takes on the property of the deceased, feeding his accounts and his gullet simultaneously?"

Insidious thought. Ridiculous, surely?

But Elizabeth's face told him he was not mistaken in this theory. And dread set in, starting in his toes and working its way slowly up his legs. Enlightenment accompanied the sensation.

"Or," he whispered, "perhaps you are a part of the game, and not its victim? Perhaps your brother's reputation is ill-gotten?"

"Bravo," Elizabeth said, eyes boring into his. "In truth, it is my brother who is used."

Staring hard at her face, considering this confession, Dante experienced a rush of coldness and a feeling akin to shock. He controlled his voice reasonably well. "You are a Hunter, Elizabeth?" he said. "A Slayer."

Gold flecks in the green.

Secrets.

Bloody fucking hell.

"You provide us with a last supper, and then put us out of our misery? This is the reason for the Midnight Courts? They are traps. Lures, all right. But death for the night creatures who frequent them."

Elizabeth's hands were on his thighs, precariously close to his crotch. Damned if he didn't feel himself swell. Damned if he had any control over what she had the talent to do to him, while allowing him to believe he was in control—even knowing what he now knew.

She had garlic in the room. She had a cross. She had guards standing by, no doubt with spears, and the angel in chains. He had to laugh. He had not seen this coming. And he had prided himself on his intuition.

And his cock was hard.

"So," he said with a quick exhale of breath. "You will have your way with me and more."

"I will not harm you, Dante. Not you. Not in the way you imagine. I have no grudge with anyone, mortal like myself or vampire, who is honorable, and who hates the feeding breed. It is simply that your kind is rare. You are rare."

"I am here at the court, Elizabeth."

"Because you could not refuse my invitation. You would aid the damsel in distress, while ignoring other pleasures."

"I thought it was the angel who needed my help."

"You were wrong there, of course," Elizabeth whispered, hand now firmly locked around his stiffened shaft. "You do not kill them, my mysterious Dante. Not even the foolish humans. I know this firsthand, do I not? You drink only as much as you need to survive. Somehow you get by on this. You maintain your wits. The lad you found in the hallway stumbled back to me after you left him. He was still able to speak."

"And your brother?"

"My brother is the prisoner here. He is alive because of my good graces. Oh, he benefits in his own way, I suppose, but his cousins do not leave the Midnight Courts. No vampire leaves this castle to inflict more torture and punishment on the land. I see to it, Dante."

"And why is your hand wrapped around me?" Dante asked. "Why have you offered yourself to me?"

"I have failed, after all the years, and all the work."

"But you do not love me, Elizabeth."

Dante found himself smiling, perhaps cruelly, perhaps only to cover what was taking place inside of himself.

"Well, I'll be damned," he whispered. "The Huntress would give herself up for…"

For what?

For love?

"I have merely to taste your blood. Is this not how it's done?" Elizabeth said.

She did not want to die. She wanted something far worse, Dante now saw. A lightness he had not recalled until now kept his gaze riveted to her face. Some of the light he had perceived in her seemed to cling to his skin. She would do this for him. She would sacrifice her life in the sun for his.

And what could he offer her? What would she lose by living in shadow?

Everything.

He would not allow it, of course. Could not bear it. Yet he could never let her go, could never lose her. Not now. Not when he loved her so utterly and completely. Not when he had met his match and his existence, no matter how much he detested it, suddenly seemed worthwhile.

"Join me?" he said with a laugh as he swept her into his arms. "I think not, dear heart."

His eyes glided over her paleness, her expression, her wide-open eyes. "I like you just the way you are, my fearless, dearest Elizabeth. Besides, if you were like me, who knows what I might have to put up with both night and day."

"Dante…"

"Elizabeth," he said, seeing that the room was now clear of everyone except the two of them, and wondering how she had accomplished that. "A man, vampire or no, must have some self-respect."

His lips upturned as he drew her closer, still, as he felt her nakedness next to him. Life with Elizabeth would be the test to end all tests, he thought as he eyed the bed with a calculation of just how long it would take to get her into it.

---

 

We don't think you will want to miss

 

JUST A HINT—CLINT

 

by Lori Foster coming in October 2004 from Brava.

 

Here's a sneak peek.

 

A bead of sweat took a slow path down his throat and into the neckline of his dark T-shirt. Pushed by a hot, insubstantial breeze, a weed brushed his cheek.

Clint never moved.

Through the shifting shadows of the pulled blinds, he could detect activity in the small cabin. The low drone of voices filtered out the screen door, but Clint couldn't make out any of the slurred conversation.

Next to him, Red stirred. In little more than a breath of sound, he said, "Fuck, I hate waiting."

Wary of a trap, Clint wanted the entire area checked. Mojo chose that moment to slip silently into the grass beside them. He'd done a surveillance of the cabin, the surrounding grounds, and probably gotten a good peek in the back window. Mojo could be invisible and eerily silent when he chose.

"All's clear."

Something tightened inside Clint. "She's in there?"

"Alive but pissed off and real scared." Mojo's obsidian eyes narrowed. "Four men. They've got her tied up."

Clint silently worked his jaw, fighting for his famed icy control. The entire situation was bizarre. How was it Asa knew where to find the men, yet they didn't appear to expect an interruption? Had Robert deliberately fed the info to Asa to embroil him in a trap so Clint would kill him? And why would Robert want Asa dead?

Somehow, both he and Julie Rose were pawns. But for what purpose?

Clint's rage grew, clawing to be freed, making his stomach pitch with the violent need to act. "They're armed?"

Mojo nodded with evil delight. "And on their way out."

Given that a small bonfire lit the clearing in front of the cabin, Clint wasn't surprised that they would venture outside. The hunting cabin was deep into the hills, mostly surrounded by thick woods. Obviously, the kidnappers felt confident in their seclusion.

He'd have found them eventually, Clint thought, but Asa's tip had proved invaluable. And a bit too fucking timely.

So far, nothing added up, and that made him more cautious than anything else could have.

He'd work it out as they went along. The drive had cost them two hours, with another hour crawling through the woods. But now he had them.

He had her.

The cabin door opened and two men stumbled out under the glare of a yellow bug light. One wore jeans and an unbuttoned shirt, the other was shirtless, showing off a variety of tattoos on his skinny chest. They looked youngish and drunk and stupid. They looked cruel.

Raucous laughter echoed around the small clearing, disturbed only by a feminine voice, shrill with fear and anger, as two other men dragged Julie Rose outside.

She wasn't crying.

No sir. Julie Rose was complaining.

Her torn school dress hung off her right shoulder nearly to her waist, displaying one small pale breast. She struggled against hard hands and deliberate roughness until she was shoved, landing on her right hip in the barren area in front of the house. With her hands tied behind her back, she had no way to brace herself. She fell flat, but quickly struggled into a sitting position.

The glow of the bonfire reflected on her bruised, dirty face—and in her furious eyes. She was frightened, but she was also livid.

"I think we should finish stripping her," one of the men said.

Julie's bare feet peddled against the uneven ground as she tried to move farther away.

The men laughed some more, and the one who'd spoken went onto his haunches in front of her. He caught her bare ankle, immobilizing her.

"Not too much longer, bitch. Morning'll be here before you know it." He stroked her leg, up to her knee, higher. "I bet you're getting anxious, huh?"

Her chest heaved, her lips quivered.

She spit on him.

Clint was on his feet in an instant, striding into the clearing before Mojo or Red's hissed curses could register. The four men, standing in a cluster, turned to look at him with various expressions of astonishment, confusion, and horror. They were slow to react, and Clint realized they were more than a little drunk. Idiots.

One of the young fools reached behind his back.

"You." Clint stabbed him with a fast lethal look while keeping his long, ground-eating pace to Julie. "Touch that weapon and I'll break your leg."

The guy blanched—and promptly dropped his hands.

Clint didn't think of anything other than his need to get between Julie and the most immediate threat. But without giving it conscious thought, he knew that Mojo and Red would back him up. If any guns were drawn, theirs would be first.

The man who'd been abusing Julie snorted in disdain at the interference. He took a step forward, saying, "Just who the hell do you think you—"

Reflexes on automatic, Clint pivoted slightly to the side and kicked out hard and fast. The force of his boot heel caught the man on the chin with sickening impact. He sprawled flat with a raw groan that dwindled into blackness. He didn't move.

Another man leaped forward. Clint stepped to the side, and like clockwork, kicked out a knee. The obscene sounds of breaking bone and cartilage and the accompanying scream of pain split the night, sending nocturnal creatures to scurry through the leaves.

Clint glanced at Julie's white face, saw she was frozen in shock, and headed toward the two remaining men. Eyes wide, they started to back up, and Clint curled his mouth into the semblance of a smile. "I don't think so."

A gun was finally drawn, but not in time to be fired. Clint grabbed the man's wrist and twisted up and back. Still holding him, Clint pulled him forward and into a solid punch to the stomach. Without breath, the painful shouts ended real quick. The second Clint released him, the man turned to hobble into the woods. Clint didn't want to, but he let him go.

Robert Burns had said not to bring anyone in. He couldn't see committing random murder, and that's what it'd be if he started breaking heads now. But in an effort to protect Julie Rose and her apparently already tattered reputation, he wouldn't turn them over to the law either.

Just letting them go stuck in his craw, and Clint, fed up, ready to end it, turned to the fourth man. He threw a punch to the throat and jaw, then watched the guy crumble to his knees, then to his face, wheezing for breath.

Behind Clint, Red's dry tone intruded. "Well, that was efficient."

Clint struggled with himself for only an instant before realizing there was no one left to fight. He turned, saw Julie Rose held in wide-eyed horror, and he jerked. Mojo stepped back out of the way, and Clint lurched to the bushes.

Anger turned to acid in his gut.

Typically, at least for Clint Evans and his weak-ass stomach, he puked.

 

Julie could hardly believe her eyes. One minute she'd known she would be raped and probably killed, and the fear had been all too consuming, a live clawing dread inside her.

Now… now she didn't know what had happened. Three men, looking like angelic convicts, had burst into the clearing. Well, no, that wasn't right. The first man hadn't burst anywhere. He'd strode in, casual as you please, then proceeded to make mincemeat out of her abductors.

He'd taken on four men as if they were no more than gnats.

She'd never seen that type of brawling. His blows hadn't been designed to slow down an opponent, or to bruise or hurt. One strike—and the men had dropped like dead weights. Even the sight of a gun hadn't fazed him. He moved so fast, so smoothly, the weapon hadn't mattered at all.

When he'd delivered those awesome strikes, his expression, hard and cold, hadn't changed. A kick here, a punch there, and the men who'd held her, taunted her, were no longer a threat.

He was amazing, invincible, he was… throwing up.

Her heart pounded in slow, deep thumps that hurt her breastbone and made it difficult to draw an even breath. The relief flooding over her in a drowning force didn't feel much different than her fear had.

Her awareness of that man was almost worse.

Like spotting Superman, or a wild animal, or a combination of both, she felt awed and amazed and disbelieving.

She was safe now, but was she really?

One of her saviors approached her. He was fair, having blond hair and light eyes, though she couldn't see the exact color in the dark night with only the fire for illumination.

Trying to make himself look less like a convict, he gave her a slight smile.

A wasted effort.

He moved real slow, watchful, and gentle. "Don't pay any mind to Clint." He spoke in a low, melodic croon. "He always pukes afterward."

Her savior's name was Clint.

Julie blinked several times, trying to gather her wits and calm the spinning in her head. "He does?"

Another man approached, equally cautious, just as gentle. But he had black hair and blacker eyes. He didn't say anything, just stood next to the other man and surveyed her bruised face with an awful frown that should have been alarming, but wasn't.

The blonde nodded. "Yeah. Hurtin' people—even people who deserve it—always upsets Clint's stomach. He'll be all right in a minute."

Julie ached, her body, her heart, her mind. She'd long ago lost feeling in her arms but every place else pulsed with relentless pain. She looked over at Clint. He had his hands on his knees, his head hanging. The poor man. "He was saving me, wasn't he?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am. We're here to take you home. Everything will be okay now." His glance darted to her chest and quickly away.

Julie realized she wasn't decently covered, but with her hands tied tightly behind her back, she couldn't do anything about it. She felt conspicuous and vulnerable and ready to cry, so she did her best to straighten her aching shoulders and looked back at Clint.

Just the sight of him, big, powerful, brave, gave her a measure of reassurance. He straightened slowly, drew several deep breaths.

He was an enormous man, layered in sleek muscle with wide shoulders and a tapered waist and long thick thighs.

His biceps were as large as her legs, his hands twice as big as her own.

Eyes closed, he tipped his head back and swallowed several times, drinking in the humid night air. At that moment, he looked very weak.

He hadn't looked weak while pulverizing those men. Julie licked her dry lips and fought off another wave of the strange dizziness.

Clint flicked a glance toward her, and their gazes locked together with a sharp snap, shocking Julie down to the soles of her feet.

He looked annoyed by the near tactile contact.

Julie felt electrified. Her pains faded away into oblivion.

It took a few moments, but his forced smile, meant to be reassuring, was a tad sickly. Still watching her, he reached into his front pocket and pulled out a small silver flask. He tipped it up, swished his mouth out, and spit.

All the while, he held her with that implacable burning gaze.

When he replaced the flask in his pocket and started toward her, every nerve ending in Julie's body came alive with expectation. Fear, alarm, relief—she wasn't at all certain what she felt, she just knew she felt it in spades. Her breath rose to choke her, her body quaked, and strangely enough, tears clouded her eyes.

She would not cry, she would not cry …

She rubbed one eye on her shoulder and spoke to the two men, just to help pull herself together. "Should he be drinking?"

Blondie said, "Oh, no. It's mouthwash." And with a smile, "He always carries it with him, cuz of his stomach and the way he usually—"

The dark man nudged the blonde, and they both fell silent.

Mouthwash. She hadn't figured on that.

She wanted to ignore him, but her gaze was drawn to him like a lodestone. Fascinated, she watched as Clint drew nearer. During his approach, he peeled his shirt off over his head then stopped in front of her, blocking her from the others. They took the hint and gave her their backs.

Julie stared at that broad, dark, hairy chest. He was more man than any man she'd ever seen, and the dizziness assailed her again.

With a surprisingly gentle touch, Clint went to one knee and laid the shirt over her chest. It was warm and damp from his body. His voice was low, a little rough when he spoke. "I'm going to cut your hands free. Just hold still a second, okay?"

Julie didn't answer. She couldn't answer. She'd been scared for so long now, what seemed like weeks but had only been a little more than a day. And now she was rescued.

She was safe.

A large lethal blade appeared in Clint's capable hands, but Julie felt no fear. Not now. Not with him so close.

He didn't go behind her to free her hands, but rather reached around her while looking over her shoulder and blocked her body with his own. Absurdly, she became aware of his hot scent, rich with the odor of sweat and anger and man. After smelling her own fear for hours on end, it was a delicious treat for her senses. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the smell of him, on his warmth and obvious strength and stunning ability.

He enveloped her with his size, and with the promise of safety.

She felt a small tug and the ropes fell away. But as Julie tried to move, red-hot fire rushed through her arms, into her shoulders and wrists, forcing a groan of pure agony from her tight lips.

"Shhhh, easy now." As if he'd known exactly what she'd feel, Clint sat in front of her. His long legs opened around her, and he braced her against his bare upper body. His flesh was hot, smooth beneath her cheek.

Slowly, carefully, he brought her arms around, and allowed her to muffle her moans against his shoulder. He massaged her, kneading and rubbing from her upper back, her shoulders to her elbows, to her wrists and still crooning to her in that low gravely voice. His hard fingers dug deep into her soft flesh, working out the cramps with merciless determination and loosening her stiff joints that seemed frozen in place.

As the pain eased, tiredness sank in, and Julie slumped against him. She'd been living off adrenaline for hours and now being safe left her utterly drained, unable to stay upright.

It was like propping herself against a warm, vibrant brick wall. There was no give to Clint's hard shoulder, and Julie was comforted.

One thought kept reverberating through her weary brain: He'd really saved her.

---

 

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Josie Adkins had to stop waving her hot little ass in Houston's face, or he was going to have to slide his hands across it and squeeze.

Which would fall squarely under the heading of sexual harassment. He could see the headline: State of Florida vs Dr. Houston Hayes. Surgeon fondles resident and loses license.

Sweet little Josie had no idea he was plotting ways to lick her like a cat does cream. She wasn't tempting him with her curvy behind on purpose, so he couldn't really blame her for the detour his thoughts had been taking on a regular basis.

But just how in the hell an orthopedic surgeon could be so damn clumsy was beyond him. And Jesus, was Josie clumsy.

So clumsy that at least six times a day he was subjected to the sight of her, bent full over at the waist, retrieving something from the floor she had dropped. Today was even worse.

They were alone in a semidark alcove, for the purpose of looking at a patient's X ray, only Josie had done her usual butterfinger bit.

The film Josie had been holding had slipped out of her hand, hit the floor, and disappeared under the desk next to her. She was now on her hands and knees, wiggling around searching for it.

God help him.

No one with a body that lush and womanly should be wiggling on her hands and knees unless she was naked and it was part of foreplay.

"Whoops. It just jumped right out of my hand, Dr. Hayes," she said in a cheerful voice.

Houston counted from one to ten and back again until he was in control of himself and his bodily urges. He didn't know what it was about her that had him hiding hard-ons left and right and sweating through three pairs of surgical scrubs a day.

She wasn't his type at all. She was on the short side, with an odd haircut that made her light brown hair flip around at gravity-defying angles. When she smiled, twin dimples appeared and she looked about twenty years old. She talked constantly. He had heard other staff members affectionately refer to her as a dingbat.

Yet here he was, unable to look away, all too aware that her scrubs were worn thin in strategic places.

"It has to be here somewhere." She chattered on, her head half under the desk.

"What the…?"

As she pulled her hand back, Houston saw she was holding a crust of moldy bread.

"Gross." She flung it down.

Time to leave a note for housekeeping.

Josie disappeared back under the desk—at least the front half.

The back half was still in full view.

He could see her underwear.

The thin scrubs hid nothing, and the position she was in on her knees pulled them taut, giving him a clear view of her panties. They were riding up just a little, sliding into the crevice between her cheeks, fitting close and tight. There was a little red lip print stamped on each side of her panties, and he wondered what she would do if he leaned forward and placed his own mouth right on one of those lip prints.

And bit her.

He was fascinated by the full curviness of her behind, and ached all over from the desire to taste her, to cup his hand between her legs and feel her heat pulsing through his fingers.

He wanted to know if there was a matching lip print on the front of her panties. So that if he kissed it he would feel her soft dewy mound give a little beneath his mouth.

It seriously annoyed him, this edgy uncontrollable desire.

Houston had never had a problem maintaining his professional distance with both patients and co-workers. If anything, he had been accused of being too reserved. Now this one woman, this tiny tornado of smiles and klutziness, had successfully breached his aloofness.

Impatient with his thoughts, he glanced at his watch. How long had she been on the floor? It felt like hours.

"Do I need to come back, Dr. Adkins, when you can make your X-ray films behave?" Visions of making her behave with his hand on her soft bottom flitted through his mind, playing like a porno video. He had meant it to sound like a cool rebuke, but it came out sounding suggestive.

Either of which seemed too subtle for Josie. She laughed from under the desk, like he was simply teasing her, than gave a little cough.

"Yuck. I think I inhaled a dust bunny."

Her head reemerged long enough to smile at him in reassurance. "Just give me a sec. I'll get it."

"Really, we can do this later." Since he had learned just about nothing could hurry her up.

Of course he could brush her aside and get the damn thing himself. But he didn't want to hurt her feelings. Josie always tried so hard to gloss over her gaffes. Plus he was a total masochist who didn't want to deny himself the glorious view of her backside, even though he knew he couldn't, shouldn't—wouldn't act on his lust.

So Houston resented the distraction and cursed himself, but still couldn't tear his eyes away from her, not even long enough to pick up the X ray himself.

"Almost got it." She gave him another blinding smile, head cocked to the right as she stretched her hand a little further.

He put his hands on his hips and reminded himself, again, that getting involved with a resident would be a complete nightmare, no matter how freaking adorable she was.

"I need one of those rubber arms, like Stretch Armstrong, that really weird doll my cousin had when we were kids. Remember that?" she asked him.

He shook his head. Rubber dolls were the least of his problems right now.

"Well, it was kind of cool, in a bizarre sort of way, kind of like molded Silly Putty. What did you play with?"

Houston fought the urge to moan. Josie managed to mix innocence with that lush body, all tossed alongside her brains and her quirky personality. It was an unusual combination he was finding damn hard to resist.

Especially in this room that wasn't really a room, but a very small, very crowded alcove cut out of a corner in the hallway. Where Josie was just inches away from him.

"When you were a kid, I mean, what did you play with?" She kept feeling around on the floor. "Risk? World domination seems like your thing."

Should he be offended? "No."

"So what then? Nerf football? Twister? Chess club?"

He folded his arms and rubbed his chin. He'd forgotten to shave that morning and the stubble was irritating and itchy. He was well aware that if another co-worker had engaged in this ridiculous conversation with him he would have walked away.

"I played doctor." Let her figure out what exactly he meant by that. Except that Josie seemed immune to sexual innuendos.

"Here it is!" She pulled the film out and handed it to him.

Josie sat back on her heels and blew her hair out of her eyes. "Oh, well, that makes sense. Like Operation? That game that buzzed at you if you dropped the body part?"

Houston just stared at her as she brushed her knees off. He had read Josie's personnel file. On paper, she was only a few IQ points short of a genius. In person, she was a chatty, clumsy, sex nymph. Who had his nuts in a knot without even trying.

"Thank you, Dr. Adkins." He took the X ray, shaking a dust ball off of it, and wondered just when her residency was over.

With a little luck she would leave Acadia Inlet Hospital for another resident rotation at least fifty miles away, taking her sweet ass with her. Of course, she had just started her second year of residency so it could be a year or more before she left.

Until then, he was going to have to work overtime at pretending she didn't make him go hard just by entering the room. He'd had two rules since he had broken things off with his last semiserious girlfriend four years earlier. No long-term relationships. No anything with another hospital employee.

It had worked so far. He dated casually, and when it was mutually agreed upon, had some no-strings-attached sex. Neither of which were done with someone he had to see every day in a professional capacity.

But when he had joined the staff at Acadia Inlet three months ago, he had met Josie. And suddenly his hormones seemed to think rules were meant to be broken.

Taking this position had seemed like a good career move, allowing him to focus on reconstructive orthopedics, and he liked the other doctors in the orthopedic group. It was an intelligent decision and he wasn't going to let one sexy little resident interfere with that.

---

 

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Driving down the same road for the third time in twenty minutes, she was having difficulty applying the try-till-you-die approach. Where the heck was the turnoff? She'd missed it twice and was now driving slower than she could be walking in the attempt not to miss it a third time. Wait. Was that an opening in the trees? It was. Carefully camouflaged, the opening to Simon's drive could have easily been taken for a natural break in the flora and fauna alongside the road.

Eric had said Simon was a privacy nut, but this was ridiculous. One of them could have mentioned that the entrance to his property was as well hidden as your average state secret. Not that Simon had mentioned anything. He'd told Eric to give her directions and then dismissed the whole situation by leaving.

It was a good thing he was just a business associate and not her boyfriend. That kind of behavior would be really hard to take in a lover.

Fortunately, she reached the gate before her wayward thoughts had a chance to go any further afield.

She stopped the rented Taurus and pressed its automatic window button. It whirred softly as the glass disappeared between her and the small black box she was supposed to talk into. She reached through the window, inhaling a big breath of fresh, forest-scented air, and pressed the red button below the box.

"Yeah?" There was no mistaking that crotchety voice. She'd only heard it once, but Simon's housekeeper was unforgettable.

"It's Amanda Zachary."

"Expected you here a good twenty minutes ago, missy. It don't pay to be late if you expect to catch the boss out of his lab."

She glared at the box and reminded herself that this was business. For business, she could put up with a cranky old man.

"I'm sorry. I missed the turn."

"Guess you missed it more than once if it took you an extra twenty minutes."

What was this guy, the timeliness cop? "Perhaps, since I am already late, you would be kind enough to buzz the gates open so that I won't keep your employer waiting any longer."

"He ain't come out of the lab yet."

She ignored that bit of additional provocation and simply said, "The gate?"

"Can't."

"You can't open the gate?" She stared stupidly at the black box, at a complete loss.

"Right."

"Is it broken?"

"Nope."

Anger overcame confusion and good sense. "Then what exactly is stopping you from opening he darn thing?"

"You got to get out of the car. I need to make a visual I.D. before I can open the gate."

"Since you've never seen me before, what exactly are you trying to identify?"

"No need to get snippy. I done my job. I got a picture of you. No use you asking how. I don't share my trade secrets with just anybody."

For Heaven's sake.

She got out of the car and stood so her head and shoulders were clearly visible above the car door.

"You'll have to step around the door, if you don't mind."

Now he decided to be polite, while asking her to do something totally ludicrous.

"What difference does it make?" She glared with unconcealed belligerence at the camera at the top of the gate.

"You got something to hide, missy?"

"Not if you discount a body that wasn't femme fatale material," she muttered to herself as she stepped around the silver car's door.

Thoroughly out of sorts, she threw her arms wide. "Look, no automatic weapons, no hidden cameras, no nerve gas. Are you satisfied?"

"I think I could be."

No! No. No. Darn it. No. This had not been the housekeeper's voice, but another, unforgettable one—that of Simon Brant. In a reflex move, she crossed her arms over her chest as she felt heat crawl from the back of her ankles right up her body and into her cheeks. She was going to kill that housekeeper when she got her hands on him.

She was going to pick him up by his toes and hang him above a tar pit. And then she was going to let go.

"Hello, Mr. Brant. I've been informed that I'm late."

He didn't answer, but the gate swung inward.