Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) (15 page)

The tip of his tongue dallied with the rush of life enclosed within the plump vein. He felt her tug, but a feminine sigh replaced resistance. Yes, like a sigh, this moment of delicious exploration, to be carried out, lingering, until it wisped to but a pleasant memory.

You can have this. Take the blood!

He pressed his teeth to flesh. His tongue teased at the backs of his teeth, languorously wetting Roxane’s flesh as if anointing the sacrifice.

A female cry alerted him, ripping him from his sensory reverie. A bass violin spat out a bellicose note. The sweltering essence of sensuality lifted.

Gabriel looked up into wide celadon eyes. A finger was pressed to parted red lips stuck in an ‘O’ of shock. And below, using his peripheral vision, the entire pit had turned to seek the origin of the shriek.

Morbleu
. Such indiscretion was not Leo’s forte.

He managed a cocky grin at the staring eyes, the tilted wigs spotted with semi-hardened wax fallen from the crystal chandeliers, and the curious lorgnettes that sought out scandal. Whispers rose like a swarm.

A shrug and a roguish wink answered their burning questions. One by one they turned back to the play.

Still clutching Roxane’s wrist, he moved to adjust the lace that rimmed her sleeve below the elbow. Absent of vulgarity he discreetly re-entered the civilized.

“Sorry.” He released hold of her wrist. “Wasn’t thinking.”

She nodded silently, smoothing her fingers where he had held her. He noticed red marks where his teeth had been and a glisten of his saliva.

Had he bitten her? It was not possible. He would not— But he could see the faint marks, thin angry lines from his front teeth impressed upon her flesh.
Morbleu
.

“Perhaps we should leave,” she managed in a shaky tone.

He nodded and led her out into the hallway, a cove of plush sapphire velvet and fathomless cream marble. He walked her a short way down the hall, angling his steps until Roxane could not walk further without colliding against the wall. Insinuating himself before her, Gabriel encircled her waist with an arm. Red velvet cushed beneath his ultra-sensitive fingertips. He felt her resistance, but as well, he sensed she wanted to remain. Tight and stiff in his arms—trapped—as unsure of freedom as a day-old starling, her celadon gaze yielded.

“The temptation will only increase if we return to my home where we will be alone,” he whispered, leaning in to sketch the curve of her ear with the tip of his nose. Strands of her hair traced his mouth. The shiver of contact shimmied through his extremities. Resistance was unthinkable. “I want you, Roxane.”

“Either that or a cell next to His Liege, your brother.” She winced, and he regretted the remark. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. It was—”

“The blood hunger speaking. I know.”

Again that damned excuse. It was as if he were not of his mind, a slave to the blood hunger. Why was it so easy for her to forgive him? Where was the kernel of fear, the good sense to beware? He needed that resistance!

She trusted him far more than he trusted himself.

Elaborate plaster moulding circled the base of the massive oculus window that mastered the dome cresting Gabriel’s bedroom. Convex, the bowl could house a team of blood-horses surely. A border of red and yellow roses surrounded the design that swirled into a forest of vivid blossoms, vines and starbursts. So many colors. Surely there were not names for every piece of colored glass. The rose window in Nôtre Dame would be envious.

“Are you lost yet?” Gabriel inquired softly.

Smiling at his whispered appeal, Roxane nodded. “I like the color in the center of that flower. Such a brilliant golden yellow. What is your favorite?”

“All of them.” He tilted his head and closed his eyes.

Having torn Leo’s gray bagwig from his head the moment he set foot inside, his natural dark locks tumbled across the high lace
jabot. Green vines and pink and orange flowers painted across his forehead, nose and cheeks. His lips curled to a satisfied smile. “I suppose celadon is my current favorite.”

Bowing her head, Roxane searched the white marble floor, following the wash of colors. Though unaccustomed to such attention from a man, she liked it. She did not fear his playful entreaty to sex. Nor did she balk from his kisses. But something about him still kept her on alert. It was not because he was a swish. There was nothing frightening about lace and powder.

Gabriel Renan was not the man he appeared to be. That was what frightened her about him. An accidental fop, he. Or rather, a creation. His insides did not conform to his outer shell. At the same time, it was that very complication of the man’s veneer that compelled her to remain beside him, to look up through the colored glass and divine the inner workings of a soul he hid from the world.

She craved a piece of his being. To truly know the man beneath the mask. Before that mask was replaced with the darkest mask of all.

“Renan!”

Both spun at Toussaint’s sudden and erratic entrance. The valet literally skidded into the bedroom, a white-knuckled clutch groping the doorframe.

“What the hell is it, man? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“A gargoyle!” Toussaint punctuated his high nervous tones with fluttering hands. “On the roof!”

Gabriel chuckled. He shot Roxane a sly wink before turning to the agitated valet. “There are all of four gargling drain spouts up on the roof, Toussaint. Did they frighten you?”

“A new one?” Again Gabriel chuckled. “You are a barmy one, Toussaint. And here I thought it was I who should be showing signs of madness.”

Roxane started down the hallway, intent on the roof access stairs. She listened for the conversation she had left. The worst could not happen. Not now.

Pushing open the roof door and scrambling up the last stairs, Roxane arrived first. The night swooped upon her with a chill that lodged in her throat. Gasping at her racing heartbeats she pressed a hand to her chest. Distant clops of horse hooves echoed out in dull thuds below. She did not spy the ‘extra’ gargoyle. A scan of the surrounding rooftops and the gray cloud-striped sky found nothing.

She let out a breath of relief and plopped onto the roof ledge.

Toussaint’s head plunged up from the stairway as if a ground rodent emerging from his burrow.

Gabriel followed, a god arising from the depths. Frockcoat tails blowing out behind him and hair listing in the breeze, he winked at Roxane. Just humoring the valet, he conveyed.

“I see nothing but the usual gargoyles,” he said as he bent over the roof edges to study the stone drain spouts, each extending out two feet. All four matched—extended lizards more like, with curled forepaws and gaping maws—save the one with a chip to its nose. Soot had darkened the heads and talons of them all. “Are you sure you haven’t been imbibing in the champagne I purchased this summer, Toussaint? Those bubbles tend to go straight to one’s head.”

“But it was right here!” The valet splayed out his hands, bewilderment toggling his voice up an octave. “I swear to it! It was huge and had wings and a monstrous body. I saw it.” He turned to Roxane. “It was there.”

She shrugged and eyed Gabriel.
Play this one carefully.
A scan of the surrounding rooftops yielded nothing unusual. Church spires and red-tiled roofs. Small lamplights glittered about the Palais Royale like a frenzied constellation that leaked toward the river and onto the island.

“I think you should retire early, good man.” Gabriel walked Toussaint to the stairs, an arm about his shoulder. The valet conceded, arms hanging limply at his sides and head bowed. “The lantern throws off such shadows. You were simply mistaken. Yes?”

He held out a hand, entreating her. She placed her palm on his. Spinning her, he drew her against his chest and spread his hands around her waist.

He smelled divine—cinnamon, fresh air and a trace of masculine musk. The hard planes of his body moving subtly against her hips worked an exquisite tease. In Gabriel’s arms she felt safe.

If only she could keep him safe.

From no one but you, my dear. No one but you…

“Long gone to the Americas,” he said. “Good of father to emancipate his son so I could inherit without waiting for my twenty-fifth birthday. About the only kindness he ever showed me. Cecil and Juin-Marie both had their obsessions. Rather, addiction. Opium took them away from me long before they physically moved.”

Roxane clasped his hand against her breast. He’d shown her a piece of his soul—finally.

“Were they ill?”

“You mean to take the opium in the first place? Not at all. But illness soon arrived, a cruel malady that blinds the user to life.”

“Abandoned to my own discretions. I’m no worse for the wear. At least not on the surface. Money can pretty up any man, hide him safely away. As you’ve seen, Leo is my armor.”

He had her there. And why couldn’t she tell him everything? It might deepen their relationship. On the other hand, it could threaten the fragile bond they had created. “I have secrets, but I’m not ready to share them. I don’t know how.”

Around two a.m., the creaks of an ill-sprung equipage passing below his window startled Gabriel awake. He rubbed a hand over his face and through the sweat that coated his flesh. Odd. It wasn’t at all hot, and the window was open—

He flashed a look to the window. The white sheer flitted in and out on a gentle breeze.

He jumped from the bed and pulled down the sash, securing the brass lock with a flick. He scanned the room. The moon let in enough multi-colored light to reassure that all the shadows were of inanimate objects.

Then he caught himself. “Hell, what is becoming of me? I’m jumping at shadows and shivering over an open window.”

He glanced outside and up into the sky at the white moon. “Bitch,” he hissed. “You control my life? I will not let you win.” Striding to the vanity he tipped the dregs of a wine bottle into a goblet and tossed it back. Warm but rich, the bouquet and— “Ouch! This wine has bite.”

Gabriel touched his lower lip. The crimson dot staining his fingertip was not wine—too thick. Examination of the goblet showed a sliver had been chipped from the rim, imperceptible, but sharp.

You cannot know if it is your blood that will make the change.

He licked his lip.

Morbidly curious, he stood in his night shirt before the cheval mirror. Waiting. Wondering. He separated the taste of wine at the back of his tongue from the metallic taste of blood, barely detectable at the tip of his tongue. Such a small drop could not possibly— “Ah!”