Lady Killer (37 page)

“I do understand. I understand that you did not fail to make her happy, that she was happy, or she never would have followed you to apologize. And I understand that you are blaming yourself for something that you had no control over. The vampire killed Beatrice. Not you, Miles.”

“He would not have gotten near her if—”

“If what? If she had not gotten angry? Or if your father had not abandoned her and her mother all those years earlier?”

Miles stared at Clio and she felt as if she were watching her words seep into his mind, into his thoughts, watching them wend themselves into his consciousness. Then she saw his eyes go blank. “You are right. I cannot erase my father’s mistakes. But I can avoid them.” He looked at her with those blank eyes. “I think it is time for us to end our involvement.”

“What?” Clio whispered in a voice that faltered. “Are you—” She stopped, as if the words repulsed her. “Are you saying that I am a mistake?”

“No. But it would be a mistake to allow this to go any farther.”

Clio lowered herself onto the tabletop, her knees suddenly unreliable. “What do you mean? How much farther could it go?” Her mind cleared and understanding hit her like a bolt of searing pain. “I see. You could start to feel something for me. You might start to care about me. And then if something happened to me, you would feel bad. By all means, we should end it before you have to
feel
anything. End it right now.”

“I am glad you agree.”

Clio stared at him incredulously, his words seeming to come to her from a great distance. “What is this? Some sort of torture? You make me tell you a hundred times that I love you, make me humiliate myself by saying it, admitting it, over and over again, and then you turn away from me?” Her voice shook.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You knew this could not go on forever.”

“Not forever. But for three more days. It does not have to end yet. And not like this.”

Miles looked confused. “What difference does that make? Why not now? Why not like this?”

“My God, I never dreamed you could be so cruel.”

“It is good that you are learning it now.”

“No, it is not. I am not learning it. I refuse to learn it.
I will not learn it.
And I will tell you something else, Miles Fraser Loredan. It is too late. You already care about me. I know you do. Because I love you and I would never have fallen in love with the man you are now pretending to be.” Her voice took on a cool sheen. “Isn’t it ironic that the more afraid you are of acting like your father the more like him you become? The more selfish? The more hurtful?”

“Stop it, Clio. Can’t you see that I am only trying to protect you?”

Clio laughed mirthlessly. “Do not lie to yourself, Miles. I do not need a guard dog. It is yourself you are trying to protect. It is yourself you are afraid of hurting.”

“No,” Miles said, shaking his head. “No. It is you. I don’t want to hurt you, Clio. But I will—it is inevitable. I will never be able to give you what you deserve.”

“Why not?” she demanded and a sliver of despair cut through her cool mockery.

“Because I am as good as married to your cousin,” Miles said with a flash of anger.

“But I am not asking you to marry me, Miles. I just want to be with you. Now.” Despair took over entirely. “Why can’t we be together now? For the time that remains? How can you hurt me when I know it will all have to end? I have never asked you for anything you could not give me.”

It was true, Miles knew, but still he shook his head. “It would not work.”

“Why?” Clio demanded and implored at once.

Miles was quiet for a moment. Then, in a voice barely steady, he said, “I could not love you for three days, Clio. I could only love you forever. And forever is not mine to give.”

Clio stared at him, stunned. “What are you saying, Miles?”

“That it would be better if you went. Now. Better for both of us.”

Clio nodded to herself quietly and rose from the table on unsteady legs. She started moving toward the door that led to the stables but stopped, her heart leaping up, when Miles spoke behind her. He was going to stop her, he was going to say this had all been a terrible mistake, he was going to tell her, in his warm, husky voice, that he did not want her to go.

But what he said was: “Why don’t you stay here until the coach is ready? You will be warmer.”

I will never be warmer,
Clio thought to herself, her heart thudding back down. She shook her head. “I would rather walk home, anyway.” She reached the door and, with her fingers trembling on the latch, turned around to face him one final time. He might lie to himself, but she was not going to, not going to lie to either of them. “I want you to know that my memories of the time we stole together are the most precious thing I have. The days I spent with you, Miles, were the very best days of my life.” She swallowed hard and added, “I guess you were right. Nothing perfect can endure. Good-bye.”

Miles was surprised at how easily it happened. The control mechanism he had spent so many years refining within himself shifted out of balance and he let it go. He knew it was going to cost him too much, that it was going to cause him unimaginable pain, and knew it was worth it. Only a madman would refuse such a gift. He crossed the room, wrapped Clio in his arms, and said, “They were the best days of my life, too,
amore.
I have been a fool. Please don’t leave. I never want you to leave me.”

Chapter Twenty

Clio later wondered if they would have behaved differently had they known that one of them had only fifty-eight hours to live, and she decided that they would not have changed anything.

Miles brought his mouth down over hers and kissed her with a force that seared through her, illuminating every sinew in her body until she felt like she must be glowing. They stood in the middle of the kitchen like that, lost in one another’s embrace, in one another’s need.

The clock behind them struck three, and Miles pulled away from her lips. Pain flickered across his face for an instant, then disappeared, doused by her smile. They stood quietly apart, holding hands, as they listened to the chimes. Time was too precious now to waste in anything besides pleasure.

Clio reached up, brushed the lock of hair off Miles’s forehead, and said, “I read in a book once that, after the strain of battle, the soldiers of the Roman Empire could consume twice their weight in food.”

Miles smiled despite himself. “Plutarch only wrote that as propaganda to get more money for the troops from the penny-pinching Roman senators,” he said, distractedly rubbing his chin against the crown of her head.

“Perhaps,” Clio conceded. “But he gave a very persuasive example in which the soldiers grew faint from lack of sustenance and were taken as captives by the very people they had just captured.”

“Ah,” Miles commented with complete unconcern. “I don’t quite remember that part. Did he, in this example, give any idea of what these soldiers liked to eat?”

“Their favorite thing was hazelnut cake,” Clio explained. “But they would be happy eating anything. After battle.”

“And do you feel as though you just fought a battle,
amore
?”

“No. I feel as though I just single-handedly waged an entire war.”

“Against whom?”

“Your past. Time. Fate. The universe.” She waved a hand at the forces arrayed against her.

Miles pulled away slightly and let his glorious golden eyes rest on hers. No one had ever struggled for him before. He was always the one doing the fighting, doing the protecting. It was an odd feeling. And, he found, he did not mind. “Thank you, Clio.”

The power of his gaze was melting her. “For what?”

“For fighting. For winning.”

You do not know what you are
the voice in Clio’s head reminded her, but with Miles’s eyes on her, she did. She was a conquering hero. She had never felt as strong or as happy as she did in that moment. “You are welcome.”

Miles smiled and his tone lightened. “We had better prepare a feast for the victor before she perishes.”

Clio nodded, then stopped. “Do you think we should check to see if Doctor LaForge came back here first?”

“That is what I did when we first got home,” Miles assured her as he moved around the kitchen, peering into cupboards. “I also stationed a guard in his room should he decide to sneak in for anything. I gave the orders as soon as we returned.” He studied the items he had laid out on the table. “No hazelnut cake. Ah, but this should do well.”

“What is it?” Clio asked, straining to see.

“Surprise,” Miles replied, touching the bellows near the flames a few times. Then he took a small copper pot from its hook on the wall, dropped into it a handful of deep red dried cherries, filled it with sweet wine from a ceramic pitcher, and hung the entire thing over the newly awakened fire.

He turned to Clio, who had seated herself on one of the stools while he worked. “Stand up,” he ordered with mock ferocity, and she did. He walked around her, as if inspecting her footman’s uniform, and shook his head. “This does not fit you at all. You will have to remove it.”

Clio looked at him. “Here? You want me to undress here?”

“We have harsh punishments for footmen who do not obey their master,” Miles warned her.

“But someone might come in at any moment.”

“Not likely. Sirus, my cook, hates to be up before six bells and the rest of the staff only get to work an hour before that. We have at least two hours to ourselves. Now start, or I shall have to do it for you.”

Behind him, the mixture in the pot began to give off a fabulously aromatic smell, sweet and warm, and intoxicating. Miles turned around to stir it and remove it from the fire, and when he turned back, Clio was sitting on the edge of the table before him, entirely naked.

She was extraordinary. His body sizzled with desire, his member straining hard against his breeches. “Lie down,” he ordered, moving alongside her and placing the pot on a stool.

She hesitated for a moment, until Miles dipped his finger into the warm liquid, brushed it against her lips, and then covered them with his.

“Delicious,” she murmured, “More.”

“Only if you do as you are told,” Miles taunted her, and she lay down. The table felt cool and hard beneath her bare bottom, and curiously exciting. It was smooth from years of oiling, and smelled faintly of sandalwood.

Miles took a long thin cookie from a platter he had placed on another stool and dipped it into the pot, then held it over Clio’s lips. She nipped at it lightly at first, then hungrily as the flavors of the cherry-infused sweet wine and the caraway and nutmeg of the cookie mingled on her tongue. He fed her three more and she felt her body grow warm. She thought at first it was from the wine, but she realized after that Miles was using his other hand to trace long, warm lines over her chest and down her stomach. The heat was concentrated with fabulous intensity on her nipples and between her legs, and she saw as she craned her neck up that he had placed small groups of the warm cherries there, glistening with wine in the firelight.

“Open your mouth,” Miles ordered and when Clio complied, he slipped one of the wine-soaked fruits between her lips. Then, he moved his mouth over her left nipple, and carefully corralled a deep red cherry into his mouth, using only the tip of his tongue.

Clio’s senses were saturated. Her eyes were riveted on where his mouth touched her body, her skin was overcome with the slow, warm caresses of his tongue, her mouth was suffused with a delicious sweetness, her nose was filled with the exotic perfume made from the mingled scents of sandalwood, warm white wine, and her arousal, and her ears rang with the sound of her moans. She watched as he suckled the last of the cherries off her breasts, letting his tongue trace a wide hot circle across her erect nipple, then gasped as his mouth moved lower. She knew what would happen next and the excitement, the expectation, almost made her climax before he touched her.

But her thoughts were nothing compared with reality. His teeth came down over the vermilion cherries and her sensitive jewel simultaneously, enfolding them together in his lips. The cherries in his mouth moved in a circle around her nub, rolling over it and hugging it and tugging at it as Miles applied more pressure, always letting his tongue rest hot and wet on its very tip. Miles bit into one of the cherries and the warm wine flowed around her. Miles gulped it down, gulped her, and Clio felt her sanity, her reason, her life, take flight. She clawed the table. “Don’t stop,” she moaned, begging. She was so close, this was it. But instead of complying, Miles pulled away, brushing his cheek against her thigh, leaving her trembling with desire.

That did it. Clio was out for revenge. She sat up and dragged his face to hers.

“You will pay for that,” she told him, her lips on his, sampling the flavor of her and wine and cherries all together.

“What are you talking abo—?” he began to ask, then felt her hands on his breeches. She had no trouble undoing the laces—she ripped them—and she pushed the fabric to the floor with her feet. His boots came off next and then her fingers went to work on his jacket, and soon he was out of that as well, standing before her entirely naked.