Love Charms (165 page)

"No!"
Beth cried, screaming in his ear.

Hot blood
filled his nostrils as his erection pounded striking throbs, while buried deep
in Beth's clenching core. "No!" he roared along with Beth as the
vampire beast rolled up inside him.

Blood. Blood.
Blood. Blood. Blood.

"Let me go.
Let me go," Beth's voice whimpered and begged.

He felt Beth's
terror through his blood lust as he kept his shaft seated and unmoving, while
he battled.
Fuck!
He'd not considered the innocent's virgin blood
seeping between their thighs so hot, wet, and luscious. He hissed with his
mouth opening, set to strike.

"Trinity,
please
,"
Beth cried.

Then he was on
the ceiling. His back flat against it as he looked down on her, splayed naked
and weeping.

"
Run,
"
he roared, guttural and inhuman.

Beth squealed in
terror, rolling off the bed as he held himself with every ounce of willpower he
possessed. She ran to the door managing to grasp her nightgown as she fled.
Then she was out the door, flinging it open and running.

He roared again
with the force he used not to follow her, but the lowly, foul beast inside him
shamed him to his core as he fell upon the bloody sheets.

Chapter
Twenty Five

Father Christian
checked his pocket for the letter his new sister-in-law had entrusted to him.
He felt the packet as he used his other hand to bring his stallion to a halt
outside the mansion he understood was Lord Adam Winslow's residence, when he
wasn't at the university. He'd already been to the university trying to deliver
his sister's letter and found Lord Winslow, unusually, was not in residence.
This was his last hope of finding Lord Winslow because he didn't know the
gentleman as well as he would have liked.

"Of course
that is foolish," he muttered. It was bad enough he was a vampire let
alone a rector, and if his brothers ever found out his fondness for men …
"I must deliver this and leave quickly," he sternly instructed
himself, trying not to remember all he found attractive about Lord Adam
Winslow.

He was heartened
to see several stallions out front, which proclaimed someone was in residence
and his task could be accomplished quickly. It seemed, besides his hopeless
infatuation, he had another looming problem, which was the ball Church had set
for the next evening. A ball which Church was demanding he attend, to choose a
lady to court. He knew, even though he was a cleric, he had a duty to keep up
the pretenses of actually being human and a viscount, whether he could stand it
or not. To Church that meant the brothers had to appear to society's matrons as
if they cared to find a lady to bring to wife. Luckily, Church stopped short of
demanding they actually marry and allowed them broken engagements after lengthy
times of being affianced. His turn was here.

Christian
dismounted his stallion and he bent to tie up the reins. "If only Trinity
and Lady Beth had come back to London," he muttered, walking toward the
front door. Their new marriage would have been enough for the pretenses to hold
for the eligible bachelors of Blacknall.

Shaken from his
pensive thoughts, Christian halted, brought up short by the scent of fresh
blood flooding over him from beyond the front door, where he was set to knock.
His fangs snapped outward, lashing past his bottom lip … and it took several
seconds of full concentration to make them recede.

"There's
blood, and a bit of it," he uttered, looking over the door.

Thoughts of Adam
Winslow being harmed gripped him and he lifted his curled fingers away from the
door before he could actually knock. Christian stepped away from the door,
looking up the face of the building. There was a balcony. He could leap to it
or go around to the back of the mansion. Whichever he did, he wasn't going through
the front.

A second later,
with unexplainable speed, he was at the back of the mansion and he saw the
destruction of a back patio door. As he stepped closer, his boots scrunched on
broken glass.

Blood
.

His nose caught
the scent at his feet, before his eyes did. Someone had been harmed breaking
through the patio doors. When he crouched to touch a speck of blood with his
finger, bringing it back to his tongue to taste … he knew instantly who it was.

"Cull,"
he snarled low, but he also nearly gagged at another foul taste mixed in the
blood.

Beyond the
strange flavor tainting the blood, he and his brothers had been dealing with
Cull too long for him not to recognize his kindred. His sharp nose and
blood-expert eyes detected blood from a different source, this blood stronger
and more poignant. He leaned forward, touching the blood from the edge of a
piece of glass, then bringing to his lips.

What he tasted
jerked him to his feet with more than recognition and overwhelming worry.
"Adam!" he exclaimed.
It had to be the most delectable blood he'd
ever tasted.

He found Adam
within mere seconds after that, lying crumpled on the ground in a stony wash
out in the fields beyond the manicured lawns of the mansion. Christian didn't
have time to wonder how Adam ended up in the wash, looking like a broken,
life-sized doll.

"Adam,"
Christian implored, kneeling beside him, trying to control his panic as his
hand already stroked Adam's bronze-tinted hair. Fear clutched him. Adam looked
dead with his head tilted back and to the side at a crazy angle.

Christian hissed
at the bite marks on Adam's neck. It was messy and savage. More brutal than any
vampire's strike needed to be. Christian realized he was praying as he bent
over Adam's blue-tinged lips and glassy, sightless eyes.

"
Please
have life," he begged, feeling not one tingle of breath from Adam touching
his lips. He jerked Adam upward, raising him into an emotional embrace, as he
cried, "You
must
live!"

His need flung
outward and he knew his brothers must feel his torment as he squeezed Adam's
body to his chest. Adam's head fell forward and to the side as tears began to
fall from Christian's eyes.

"No! God
no!" he cried.

He knew the
signs of a gluttonous and vile vampire feeding on a human unto death. If
there'd been but a shred of life left in Adam he could save him. He beat Adam's
back once … twice, without mercy. Until …

"Praise
God!" Christian bellowed, laying Adam down, and then he ripped a vein in
his wrist open. His black blood instantly spurted forth and Christian frantically
laid his wrist to Adam's blue-tinged lips. Before he'd felt a small gasp, a
flutter.

"I knew I
felt it," he cried smashing his knuckles across the tears in his eyes.
"Drink, Adam," he begged. "Dear God, just swallow once."

Christian
watched the blood fill Adam's mouth. "Please," he pleaded, rocking
his body with the agony filling it. "Please!" he shouted.

The blood began
to drip from Adam's unmoving lips and Christian broke down with his face
pressed to Adam's chest. "Oh dear God, I pray this man finds peace."
His voice broke as he began the benediction of Last Rites through his growing
sobs.

But as was the
way when a vampire turned a human to their kind, the poor human flesh
convulsed, and suddenly Adam's chest heaved beneath Christian's face.

"Adam,"
Christian cried, rising to turn Adam's upper torso onto his lap, and then he
grabbed hold of him, lifting him against his chest to hold him as tightly as he
could.

The transition
from human, to death, and into a vampire, was inhuman agony and torture until
the body was reborn into violent convulsions.

"God help
me," Christian pleaded, praying his brothers would find him quickly,
because Adam would not survive daylight the second he turned.

As Adam thrashed
beneath his unnaturally strong embrace, Christian wept for his own weakness.
He'd not been strong enough to simply let Adam die. He'd ripped the choice from
Adam, who may never forgive him.

Christian
thanked God for his brothers and their intimate, otherworldly connection,
because on swift stallions of white and black, Church and Baptiste came to his
side. He could only wonder if the distance kept Trinity from feeling his need
or did his brother sit worried, but impotent to help, from so far away.

"The
brother?" Church questioned in a fierce tone, placing Adam as he halted
his stallion and jumped down to race to Christian's side.

Christian tried
to control his emotions as they spoke at once. He said, "We must get him
into darkness. There's no time."

While Church
asked, "What's happened here?"

Baptiste came
forward and he threw his dark cloak over Adam. They all knew what
transformation looked like and the cloak would help with the sunlight. Yet it
wouldn't cure the danger.

"I found
him sucked dry … near death," Christian said, holding strong to Adam's thrashing
body. "Something occurred at the mansion, there."

Church looked
toward the aged structure. "No matter, it's the closest place."

"He needs
darkness
now
." Baptiste said what they all knew. Baptiste's form
was as a blur of movement out of the corner of one's eye. He'd gone to check
the mansion for danger with his words left behind, "I'll return
shortly."

Church crouched,
then worked to grab each of Adam's jumping legs, until he had them contained
together. "Pray there is a good dark cellar," Church said through
gritted teeth.

Christian heaved
with him, standing with Adam carried between them. Baptiste flared beside them,
catching Adam's midsection. "You won't believe what's about in
there," Baptiste said. "But it's clear to a vast underground cellar."

They took their
burden by Baptiste's direction and Christian saw the blood bath in the main
foyer. Then, as they turned to go down into the bowels of the mansion, he saw
the headless torso, flung partway up the main staircase. Just at that moment,
an inhuman howl erupted from beneath Baptiste's cloak.

"
What
evil has happened here?" Church's voice rang out.

Chapter
Twenty Six

Beth looked up
as the maid entered the bedchamber where she was packing her belongings. Once
again.

"Lord
Trinity sends word your carriage will be ready to leave shortly, my lady."

The maid bobbed
a curtsy as Beth nodded her acknowledgment of receiving the message. She tried
to force her hands from shaking as she continued to fold the dress she was
packing. "Tell him I send him thanks for his courtesy. I will be
ready," Beth said, steadfastly folding without looking up as she spoke.
Her mind was in turmoil compared to the actions she used. She'd not seen
Trinity since the night before … when he'd flung his body to the ceiling

What greater
evidence could she have that he wasn't human? God, she'd been a silly girl
playing with wickedness. Beth threw down the dress she'd folded and paced to
the window, clutching a hand to her stomach. No one had ever told her the
intimate time between a man and woman would be so painful.

"Will it
hurt like that every time?" she asked. Her voice was as tight as her mind
and belly, while her gaze focused on the carriage waiting below in front of the
manor.

Suddenly to her
attention, Trinity strode into view and she nearly stepped away from the
window. Yet the part of her infatuated with her husband stayed and watched him.
What turmoil … half of her desired him beyond compare, while the other half was
terrified of him. Now.

She watched him
checking the carriage horses' harnesses. He had his dark-streaked blonde hair
loose to the top of his shoulders. His hair looked as though he'd fisted his
hand through it many times. He exuded a type of dark masculinity, which was
much earthier than any men of the
ton
. He'd told her once he was now
made to attract humans. She could certainly see that, and she remembered the
feel of his muscular body beneath her hands.

His head turned
sharply and she gave a small gasp, falling back from the window where his
striking gaze was centered. Her heartbeat fluttered with fear and her fingers
clamped to her mouth. Lord help her. What was she going to do?

Minutes passed
and she realized she was dreading going down to the carriage. If it wasn't for
the worry she felt for Adam, inexplicably growing every hour since she'd had
that terrible nightmare, she was uncertain if anything could propel her.

"This is
nonsense," she exclaimed, trying to bolster herself. She marched back to
packing. Grabbing the dress and starting to fold it once again. "I'm a
married woman now," she told the dress with resolve. She thought of her
parents. She'd been young when her father passed, but she remembered them
together.

"They were
happy," she muttered, finally finished folding the dress, then putting it
into a waiting valise. She didn't believe her mother could have been false
about the contentment that had exuded from her. How could her mother be content
if there had been pain involved every time she and her husband were intimate?

"She
couldn't." Beth let the knowledge settle in her mind. Then there was the
blood … Trinity's blood she'd tasted. Still craved. Once she'd tasted it, she'd
known certain things and those vague intuitions spoke of bliss in sexual
congress. Also sinking in, as though his blood fused with her body, were the
merits of the man whose blood she'd drunk.

"So …"
Beth paced to the door and back. "I must do something to halt these
fears." Still, the image of Trinity latched, impossibly, to the ceiling
above her as his features twisted, while he roared for her to run was not an
easy thought to expel.

Trinity paced by
the carriage, unwilling to fetch his bride. By God, there had been a glimmer of
hope to have and to hold a real wife. Nearly, he'd grasp something he'd thought
impossible. Then …

Trinity made a
frustrated sound, raising the carriage horses' hackles, desperately wanting to
punch something. What a bald-faced idiot he was to forget about the virgin's
blood. He cursed under his breath, and stalked to the back of the carriage. He
had his stallion ready to ride, because he'd rather dare the length of full
sunlight than travel inside the carriage with Beth. He tried to tell himself it
was cowardliness and not worry over seeing fear reflected in her multi-colored
eyes.

"Hellfire,"
he cussed again. He could intimately feel her fear.

"My lord,
I'm ready," Beth's soft voice spoke behind him. He'd been so preoccupied,
she startled him. Luckily, he was a master at disguising his emotions and his
body didn't even twitch. Then he turned to look down on her avoiding gaze.
"I hope you will ride inside the carriage with me," she said.

Trinity raised
an eyebrow to this … everything about her, from her gaze not able to look at
him, to her stutter, and to the tremor he could see in her hands told him the
last thing she desired was to be locked in the carriage with him. His Beth was
not unintelligent, so she must have a reason.

"As you
wish," He bowed slightly and she glanced at him, and then nodded.
Unfortunately, he could be making a horrible mistake. He had no idea what to
say to her or any clue how to go about assuaging her fears. Realistically,
every one of her fears was based in fact.

He couldn't tell
her he'd not turn into a primal beast again at the thought of tasting her
blood, nor could he tell her that he'd be any better at trying to make love to
her. He just had no experience at sex when it counted … and this did count to
him in every way.

With no answers,
he forced himself to the carriage door to hold it open for Beth and she didn't
shy away from him when he took her elbow to guide her up into the conveyance.
There came a moment when he thought about bolting … right before he stepped up
into the carriage after her.

Beth nervously
twisted part of the skirt on her sturdy gray traveling dress between her
fingers. At least she wasn't shivering anymore. What had she expected, that
Trinity would pounce on her? She looked at him sitting across from her. They'd
both been studiously gazing out opposite windows, avoiding each other for the
last thirty minutes of the carriage ride. Even though they'd not spoken, being
in the carriage alone with him had given her many insights. Her husband was as
worried as she was. It furrowed his brow and added lines bracketing his mouth
and it stole some of the intensity from his dark blue eyes,

She cleared her
throat … she had to find a way to speak to him.

"It was
your virgin's blood." Trinity's voice was very low, and he didn't look at
her but at the seat beside her.

At first, Beth
was startled by the suddenness and then intimacy of Trinity's words. It took
her a moment to comprehend. "Blood," she whispered, leaving out,
"Of course!" Still, she blushed. She was too new at talking about
such things with a man.

Trinity's rich,
blue eyes centered on her. "I forgot to expect it. And, my lady, it is
doubly hard for one of my kind to control both their blood lust and aggressive
sexual desire at the same moment."

Even though her
cheeks were hot, Beth forced herself to continue looking directly at her
husband. Desperately, she wanted something worldly to say and she wished she
weren't so naive.

"Of
course," she muttered, remembering the aggressive desire singing between
their bodies, molding them together. It had been the most incredible experience
of her life, until … "It hurt," she pushed past her stubborn and
embarrassed lips.

It was an
incredible feat and she cringed, wishing she could snatch the unworldly words
back. She couldn't look at him and her gaze turned tragic …

 Changing seats
so quickly the human eye could barely detect it, Trinity grasped Beth's
diminutive chin. He was gentle, but firm, sealing their gazes together.
"So brave," he murmured, watching one crystal tear escape his wife's
green hazel eye. He'd been so involved in his own tragic shortcomings, he'd
failed to remember Beth's naivety. "I've not dealt with many innocent
maidens in my time," he began.

She tried to
shake her head and loosen his grip as a torrid blush covered her pale cheeks.
Damnation, he was making it worse, not finding the right words to say. He
didn't release her as he strove again to find the right way.

"It only
hurts the first time, sweet wife, and I swear to god I will never hurt you like
that again."

She gasped in
obvious relief with her plush lips parting close to his hovering mouth. It
filled him with pride she so thoroughly accepted his words. He simply wished
his dilemma were so easily soothed. His temper … her obvious regret … and his
need to make the disaster better brought his lips down over her soft mouth. He
would make her see the only monster to fear was the one starving for her blood.

Trinity
half-expected Beth to reject him, but while her lips trembled at first, her
body leaned toward him, not away. Her hand pressed against his chest as he
loosened his hold on her chin and molded her lips beneath his mouth. She tasted
of freshness and vitality — everything he wasn't — and for a
moment, it was if he were savoring her life. Then passion followed as she
moaned, lifting her hand and pressing it to the back of his neck. He followed
her need, going deeper, heating his tongue along hers. The sway of the carriage
moved them in a dance of kissing as he supported her on his chest, feeling the
full swell of her breasts.

For once, his
thoughts praised her soft but ripe innocence, not finding it an impediment to
his lustier nature. She called to everything that had once made him a man and
she mesmerized the beast he was now. Therefore, he kissed her with honor and
care, taking, but not demanding so he could have the pleasure for a lifetime.
His little human wife was becoming bolder with her tongue swirling against his,
and it thrilled him to feel her budding passions, but also humbled him to feel
her trust.

"So
sweet," he murmured, against her warm, kissed lips. "I could kiss you
for hours." His hand strayed to the fullness of her breast and he cupped
it, gently squeezing.

"Trinity,"
she moaned, leaning into his hand and pressing her mouth against his lips.
"You make me feel so … so …"

He found the
word for her. "So aroused."

Their lips
parted as she blinked at him and he continued to hold her tempting breast. She
looked aroused, gloriously so with her lips kissed redder and her multicolored
eyes slightly dazed. He realized that even though he'd terrified her, in the
most intimate situation, he'd also aroused her passions several times now.

His lips smirked
in satisfaction, as his eyes grew heavy-lidded with his own lust. He brushed
his thumb across where her nipple should be beneath the serviceable fabric of
her traveling dress and he felt the faint outline as the tip of her nipple grew
taut. Perhaps, with passion, he could salvage their budding relationship’s near
decimation.

His erection
wanted too. His desire was always going to hunger after the sumptuous treat his
wife was. That fact satisfied him completely. Nevertheless, the persistent
thought of whether he could entice his innocent wife to ride his erection in a
moving carriage was not letting him alone. Even with thoughts about the
appropriateness after what they'd been through wasn't enough to dislodge the
licentious idea. An idea that was becoming intentions as his pretty wife
sighed, pressing her breast into his palm and onto his teasing thumb for more.