Follow The Night (Bewitch The Dark) (20 page)

“The moonlight romances you,” he said. “You have never looked more gorgeous than now.” Perhaps it was that moonlight flooded his senses, teasing him with its power. “
La Luna
beautifies you and only torments me.” He stared across the expanse of marble glittering beneath his feet. A sigh opened the emotion so oft fettered. “I am concerned, Roxane.”

“How so?”

“With the fact this madness you claim will be mine has yet to even tickle my senses. Are you so sure of yourself? What proof have you beyond your brother? Might he have been a lark? Perhaps the madness had been lurking in Damian’s soul for ages?”

“How dare you!”

“And with the vampire’s bite it was released?” He turned and placing a knee between her legs hovered over her, pinning her from struggling free. The book slid to the floor. Blood coursed through his system, firing his vigor and emboldening his manner. “Perhaps you want what the vampire can give you? Everlasting life. Is that what you want from me, my pretty country rustic?”

He tightened his grip on her wrist. The pain distorting her face fascinated him. Intention drew his study to her mouth, tight and slightly parted.

“You tremble, lover. Is it me you fear?”

She shook her head negatively, but gasped when he squeezed her wrist. The sound of her pain—small and contained—intrigued. He drew closer, lingering but a kiss from her face. Pants hushed across his chin, his nose. Her eyes flickered between his. He could feel her heartbeats racing madly in the palm of his hand. The scent of life—so frightened—shimmered upon his tongue.

The volume of her shriek snapped a twig inside his brain.
Wrong. Pain. No.

He released her wrists and pushed up. Turning and pacing he scrubbed fingers over his scalp, fighting at the inner call to leap, to simply…succumb.

Distance yourself. Avoid yet another woman’s comfort.

His pace echoed across the marble floor. Passing the pianoforte, he pounded his fist upon the surface, setting the blue violin to a teeter and a boxy metallic chord vibrating into the moonlit air. Absently sliding his palm along the sensuous line of the massive instrument, he moved around the curved end, leering at the woman who clutched her wrist. A leap would place him upon her.

A bite would make her his.

He turned and pressed his forehead to the lacquered pianoforte. It felt as though tears poured from his eyes, but he could not cry. He had never cried. He did not know how. Tears never won attention; he had learned that early on.

The soft
schush
of satin brushed his calf. A gentle touch slid down his arm and traced the top of his palm.

Surrendering an overwhelming need to pour out his pain, Gabriel lifted himself from the pianoforte, and going to his knees before Roxane, pressed the side of his face to her belly. Rosemary and a trace of cinnamon. Already she belonged to his soul, like a favorite scent that he ever relied on for security. He wrapped his arms about her hips and clung like a man lashed to the mast in a storm. He pressed against her body, wanting to step inside the woman and lose himself.

And he began to shake, his shoulders trembling and his body hiccupping as he cried a tearless storm into her embrace.

She did not say a word. She did not coo or whisper soft reassurances, as a loving mother should. Not that Gabriel would know the mien of a loving mother; he could only guess. Instead she stood there, tall, straight, her hands upon his shoulders, accepting his pain. Without question.

And for that moment he did not scent the cloying odor of temptation, nor did he gauge the beats of life pulsing her veins. He merely was. And the feeling, so different, so unique to his history, lightened him.

She did not want to use him for her own gain. She wanted to save another man who desperately needed that help. And only a vampire could provide the catalyst.

This woman is nothing like you have ever known.

He nuzzled into her skirts. A sigh released memories. “They called it their comfort. The result of eating opium. The high that sailed them to the clouds, and then nestled them in a languorous reverie. Cecile and Juin-Marie were addicted. Nothing in the world mattered, save their precious comfort. Not even their son.”

Roxane’s fingers strode softly over his forehead and he turned his face into her palm.
Safe here.

“She tried, my mother. In this very room. She would recline on that daybed, so oblivious—as you were just now. The opium took hold quickly, capturing her no matter my attempts to win her attention.”

“The violin?” she whispered.

He nodded. “I used to imagine, as I played, that the smile on mother’s lips was for my music. I possess the keen ability to fool myself into believing most anything.”

“I am sure they loved you.”

“Yes. So much so, that they left me. Abandoned for the quest. They could no longer remain in Paris, for father had insulted the king. Far as I know they are in the Americas, lost somewhere in the dregs of their comfort.”

“How old were you?”

“Old enough. I had returned from the Grand Tour. You may think I should have been capable of seeing to myself. Hell, they left me a fortune gained from the sale of opium overseas. That is why I try to every day give it away. Impossible though. The Renan name is spat upon in respectable circles. No one of import will associate with me, not even for my parents’ money. The salons I attend as Leo? Outcasts and former courtiers who have fallen from grace, yet still live for the fantasy of acceptance.”

Pressing his cheek against her stomach he held her endlessly. To have spilled it so quickly, and neatly, shocked and surprised. Was it so easy as that to release the past?

But that day, the last day he’d ever looked into his mother’s eyes, was not easily put into words. How long had he stood before the closed door following his parents’ cold and final retreat? Stiff and stunned, he could precisely recall the tightness of his fists, balled at his thighs, as he stared at the door.

“
Adieu
, my son,” Juin-Marie had said, then kissed him on the forehead.

Adieu
. Go with God. A final parting.

When Toussaint had finally roused him from his frozen state, Gabriel had literally fallen into the valet’s arms and allowed him to walk him upstairs to his bed chamber. He had not heard from either since. He did not care. Did he?

He swept his tongue across her lips, tasting red wine. From the Renan private vintage, bottled deep in the lush valleys of Provence. He could taste the raspberries that had pushed up from the soil before grapevines had ever been planted in the field. The earth, rich and moist, and the spring rain that plundered the hard grape buds and the sun that sweetened and ripened them to a fat, rich fruit.

But the wine did not come close to the taste of Roxane’s blood. It could not.

You put them in a thrall. It is a mind thing…

He must know.

“You want me to love you?” she whispered against his mouth. Celadon crinkled to concern and she touched his mouth with a finger.

He licked her skin. The acrid taste of the glue used between the book’s
pages lingered, and beneath that a saltiness. And underlying that the pulse of hot, thick blood. Tension coiled in his chest. The hunger would not be so easily put aside.

The moon is soon full. You’ve but to wait it out. You do want a normal life.

Yes, normality. Domesticity. This woman by his side. Constancy.

You have finished a marvelous rage and you think now of simple pleasures?

“C-could you love me if I was a madman?” The curve gracing her lips smoothed. “Could you? Would you visit me every day at Bicêtre?”

“And what if I am not strong? What if I succumb? You see I slip into the rage so easily.” She pushed from his embrace but he skipped around in front of her. “Roxane, could you love a vampire? A man who craves your blood and cannot be happy unless he is sucking at your neck?” Again he pulled her into a tight embrace. Tension made her curves hard against him; she did not want to surrender, to fit into him. “Can you imagine what it must be like? Two people sharing their blood. Like a sort of dark communion of the souls.”

He pushed his fingers through her hair. Illuminated in paleness, those thick satin lips parted in a weak cry. Trailing kisses down her chin and neck, he kissed hard at the pulsing vein.

“Don’t be foolish, Gabriel. You will make it to the moon. You can do it.”

“What if I prefer to follow the night?”

“F-follow the night?” With but a twist of her shoulders she freed herself from his hold. Roxane started toward the door, backwards, facing him to—keep the predator in sight? “You romanticize the vampire!”

“Where are you going? Do you flee from me?”

She stopped in the doorway, her fingers clinging to the gilded chair rail. “You have no idea what it will be like to become a killer—”

“Where do you obtain your information on vampires? Tell me.” He stalked across the room. Each step pushed her out and into the hallway. She was fleeing him!

He rushed forward. “You believe they are evil and wicked. Do you imagine I could become so evil? Look at me, Roxane. My veins are lined in lace!” And comprehension voiced itself. “I would make the most incredible vampire.”

“You honestly believe your brother can recover from madness?” Could he find her truth in the depths of those moistened eyes?
I want to be the ice king, reigning within her ice-forest eyes.

“Damian is the world to me, Gabriel.”

“Indeed.”

No crown of icicles for him this day. A strong and determined woman, Roxane would not bring him into her plot to befriend the vampire Anjou.

But he could be stronger for her.

He rushed ahead of her and opened the door to her bed chamber. Her eyes darted from the doorway, a dash to her sanctity. Sensing her trepidation he stepped from the doorway. She slid around and inside.

She was frightened of him!

You do not want to frighten, you want to seduce.

Roxane stood inside the doorway. The guest chamber was dark, the velvet curtains pulled before the windows to keep away the moon, the vicious temptress. Gabriel literally swayed with the rage. A violent rage. A pitiful rage. A tempting rage of madness, sadness, and desperation she could not disregard.

He hadn’t moved from the spot outside her door. He remained, listening, waiting. She could verily feel his wicked desire current through the air.

He’d frightened her. Her wrist ached—by morning a bruise would show. But she could not close the door. The vicomte’s parents had abandoned him in the quest for unnatural satisfaction. No wonder he desperately craved attention.