Lady Killer (26 page)

She glanced at Miles, considering telling him she thought it barbaric to treat books as if they were scrap paper and underline things in the text, as he so clearly had in this passage—and why only every few words? Very distracting—but he was not looking at her.

“
And on
every
such night as there is no
Moon
, when between her monthly courses she doth
hide
her face, on that night will the Vampire be at his most powerful. Woe awaits he who thinks he
can
strike the Vampire down on such a night, for he has the power of the Devil in him most strongly
then
, and will be invincible.
”

What would it be like to be invincible, she wondered. There were a few things she might try if she were invincible like—

She forced her eyes back to the page.

“
And
I say ‘he’ but there is also the other kind, the female or ‘she-vampire’ who is the same every respect, save this one: that she is far more dangerous. For though she look like a
comely
woman she hath the strength of ten men when the bloode is in her, and may do bold acts, and daring.
”

Bold acts and daring. If she were looking for evidence that she was not the vampire, she had just found it. The female vampire was prone to bold and daring acts and she felt prone to neither of those things. If she were bold and daring, she would march over to Miles, tell him that it was wrong to write in his books and also casually mention that she wanted him to make love to her, and see what happened. But she knew what would happen. He would laugh at her. He, who had made love to the most beautiful women in England, would want nothing to do with her. She had been a fool to think he might. What was she? A dull, poor, plain, unwanted, unlovely woman who no one had ever bothered to wish a happy birthday and whose only real friends were a bunch of equally unwanted and possibly insane people, and a monkey. What would the Viscount of Dreams want with her?

But the night before, for just a moment in the alcove—

Clio’s indignation flared. It really was not fair of him to act the way he had toward her one night, to touch her and kiss her and say—say whatever he had said, if he was just going to glare at her the next day. How dare he treat her that way? Very well, he was angry at her, but as far as she could see he had no right to be. He was just as much to blame about her faked escape from his apartment as she was, maybe even more. After all, if he had not locked her up as a prisoner she would not have had to escape. If he had not made it so steadfastly clear that he intended to ignore her wishes and demean her ideas, then she might have consulted him. They were supposed to be partners, not jailer and prisoner.

And even if he was not attracted to her, he did not have to treat her like a baby sheep who needed constant shepherding, incapable of knowing its own mind or protecting itself from dangerous wolves. She wanted only one kind of protection from him: protection of others from herself. Despite the fact that she felt neither bold nor daring, she could not yet discount the fact that she might be the vampire. But that was all she wanted. And that should not interfere with her investigation in the least.

She was just marshalling her arguments when his voice broke into her thoughts.

“It is time for us to talk,” he said, rising and walking around the table so that he was standing in front of her.

She raised her chin and looked at him defiantly. “I completely agree. And I already know what you are going to say.”

Miles raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

There was something about having him look at her that made her stomach flutter. “Yes. And I do not feel I owe you an apology for dragging you out of here today. You left me no choice. You treated me unfairly. I thought we were supposed to be partners but instead I was your prisoner.”

He seemed to consider, not so much her words as her, and she could tell he found her lacking. “It is an interesting point. But you must admit you got me out of the house under false pretences. It would seem to me that partners should not keep secrets from one another.”

She cleared her throat. What had she been meaning to say? “In the interests of having no secrets, I shall tell you that I am very mad at you.”

His face was a cold mask. “Really? Why?”

His expression made Clio shudder and for a moment she could not remember. “Because you have not let me pursue my investigation. Because you have treated me like a baby sheep.”

“I see. A baby sheep.” He bent toward her so their faces were almost touching and his eyes were hooded. “Exactly what would you have me treat you like, Lady Thornton?”

Clio could feel his breath on her cheek, could smell him, his unmistakable smell, an impossible mixture of hazelnuts and virility. Her heart was racing and her breathing was shallow. “Like a person. Like a woman,” she said.

“Ah,” Miles replied, a long exhaled syllable.

“Ah? Is that all you can say?” Clio was outraged. “My lord, your behavior to me is absolutely unacceptable.”

Miles scrutinized her and she could see a vein in his jaw throbbing. “And just how should I behave, Lady Thornton?”

“With respect,” she said forcefully. “You should share your information with me. And consult me about the investigation. Not pace around me as if I were an exhibit at the fair.”

“Share information,” Miles repeated as if the words were scalding his tongue. “Very well, Lady Thornton, I will share some information with you. I will share with you the fact that you were wrong about what I was going to say before.”

“I was?”

“Yes.” He paused. “I was not going to ask for an apology.”

“You weren’t?”

“No.” Miles straightened himself to his full imperious height. “I have no use for your apology, and only a fool asks for what he knows he will not get. No, I was going to ask—” He gazed down at her face, her lips slightly parted, her eyes expectant, wondering. And purple.

Miles’s mind took flight. There were a thousand strong reasons why he should not do what he was about to do, and not one of them was powerful enough to stop him. Lowering himself onto one knee so their faces were level, he brushed the lock of hair from his forehead and said, “I was going to ask if I could make love to you.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Impossible,” Clio breathed and she realized she had been swallowing back hiccups for the previous five minutes.

Miles recoiled. His expression grew instantly distant, walled. “Of course. In that case, we should get back to our investig—”

Clio brought her lips to his with a hunger born of ten years of dreaming and Miles responded by sweeping her into his arms and holding her tight. He had told himself that it was not her that he desired but something else, something no one could give him. But he had suspected, with instincts honed through years of studying defenses, that he was lying to himself. And now, feeling her against him, he knew.

He pulled away to look at her. For one moment the wall that was always there vanished and in his eyes Clio saw a swirling mixture of desire and awe and pain and something else. Then his lips crushed hers again, and she saw nothing at all.

Miles covered her with lavish kisses, hundreds of them, her cheeks, the hollow below her throat, sampling her, memorizing her. Her flavor overwhelmed him, her suppleness, her willingness. His tongue licked her lips, urging them apart. Never had anything, anyone, felt so right to him. Clio Thornton was not a woman, she was
the
woman. The woman he wanted, the woman he needed.

Time was suspended as he held her against him, but when her lips opened to his it began again, hurrying, insistent, implacable. They had no time to lose. As if she felt the urgency, too, Clio grabbed for the laces of his breeches, fumbling with inexpert fingers, giving him half caresses that made him gasp. Miles reached down to help her, his fingers wrapping around hers, their hands getting in the way of one another, until clumsily, laughing together, shyly and boldly at once, they had unloosed and untied and unhooked everything that kept them apart. The clothes between them fell away, stripping away all reserve, and they stood together, wondering at one another, first apart, then skin on skin, warm tight planes pressed against each other as closely as possible.

Miles was more beautiful and awe inspiring than any of Clio’s dreams had prepared her for. She ran her hands up his back, along his shoulders, tracing the lines of the muscles of his stomach, their perfection only enhanced by the deep scar that cut across them. His body was astonishing, powerful and firm and warm and soft and trembling and precious. She felt his heart beating in his chest, against hers, pounding in time with hers. She wanted to know everything about him, explore every part of him, right away, instantly. She dropped one of her hands down and timidly touched the hard shaft standing between them. It sprang toward her and she felt Miles’s heartbeat stop. Then it started again, racing faster than before as she lowered her eyes and wrapped her fingers around his warm smoothness. “I never knew anything could feel like this,” she breathed.

“Neither did I,” Miles gulped back. Her hand, her eyes, on his member felt extraordinary. Each time she moved her fingers he felt pulses of intense sensation from the base of his feet to the tips of his ears. It was as if she were not touching him in one place, but everywhere at once, at his very core, arousing him, igniting him, spreading sparks through her fingertips. She was otherworldly, an enchantress. She was his. At least for tonight.

Her eyes rose to meet his and he kissed her with the full force of his desire, thrilled when she answered, kissing him hard, passionately, everywhere, responding unlike any woman had ever responded to him before. As they kissed she stroked her hand along his length, then rubbed her palm against his tip. Instinctively she found the sensitive place where it met in two round petals and ran her thumb over it.

Miles staggered at the sensation. “If you do not stop, I shall explode,” he whispered to her.

“I thought that was the intention,” she whispered back with a coy smile.

Something about her tone brought Miles’s reason flooding back. What the hell was he doing? Summoning all the self control he possessed, he stilled her hand with his own and looked at her. “Clio, you know I cannot marry you.”

“Do you want to stop, Miles?”

Miles shook his head grimly. “No. But it is, it would be—”

“—Dishonorable of you to take my virginity,” Clio finished the sentence for him. She knew what he was saying, what he was trying to ask. “I understand. But you do not need to worry, my lord. Nothing you could do will dishonor me.” Then she smiled up at him, a smile more potent than any touch, and said, “Make love to me, Miles. Here. Now.”

He could deny her nothing. Tenderly, he lifted her onto the round table he had been working at, positioning himself between her thighs. Her hand was resting on his member but he willed himself to ignore it, concentrating instead on her. Using his nose he tilted her face up to his and kissed her softly once, deeply once, then began to move his lips lower.

Working with the dedication of a new-world conqueror, he planted kisses down her arms, along her hips, across her thighs, leaving trails of singing sensation behind. Clio felt his mouth leave a feathery kiss on the inside of her wrist, and a slower, deeper one on the palm of her hand, felt his lips close around each of her fingers, pulling them into his mouth, slowly, one at a time, wrapping his warm tongue around them, letting his teeth glance over them, meeting her eyes with a mischievous smile. He was touching only her hand, a hand she had been in possession of her entire life, and yet she felt like she was going to ignite. His mouth strayed down her legs then, to her feet, and when he ran his tongue over her arch and between her toes while his fingers slid slowly up her thighs, Clio thought she was going to lose her mind. She watched, unable to move, as Miles parted the soft brown hair between her legs with one finger and placed a gentle kiss on the bundle of nerve endings gathered in a tight knot there.

Clio could wait no longer. She pulled his head up so it was level with hers and, kissing her taste on his lips, begged, “Now. Please, please be inside me now.”

Miles gave in. He rubbed his stiff shaft along her body, making himself slick and wet with her moisture. Then he braced himself against her opening and stroked her with his fingers and when she bucked against him, demanding him, he pushed the top half of his length into her.

He felt something give, felt her body opening for him, welcoming him home, and he plunged himself entirely into her. She was impossibly tight, impossibly narrow, impossibly wonderful.

“
Miles!
” she cried out in a tone equally divided between pleasure, surprise, and pain, and he stopped moving and began to pull out of her. She wrapped her arms around him. “No, don’t. Not now. Please no.”

Miles was rigid. “But I hurt you.” Understanding came all at once. “Oh god, Clio, this is your first time. But I thought—You said—”