Gabriel hesitated so long that she thought she might have to slash her own wrist and rub it on his mouth, and then he bent his head to whisper a kiss across the thin skin over her veins. "A taste, then."

"Exactly." As his mouth opened and his teeth sank into her skin, pain and something else streaked up through Nick's arm.

Something warm and wonderful and utterly wicked.

Oh, s.h.i.t.

A moment later she stopped shaking and braced herself against his bare torso. He needed her as his food, his medicine, and that was all. That much she did understand about them. But as his mouth tugged and she felt the flow of her blood into his mouth, something changed. The disgust and self-loathing she felt were strangled by a turning, tightening need.

It's why they're so beautiful, she told herself, forcing her heavy eyelids to open, watching his throat move as he swallowed. You want them so bad that you don't fight it.

Evergreen made her the lady of the tapestry, enveloping her, holding her there. The night blurred into something dark and green and beautiful. She resisted the urge to wrap herself around him, but only just.

His mouth moved, the sharp ends of his dents acerees grazing the inside of her forearm. He didn't slice her open or break her skin at all, but his lips and tongue moved against her flesh. She waited for the next bite, but it never came.

"Again." Was she begging for him to take more? h.e.l.l, she was. "Please."

Gabriel pressed his palm against the punctures in her wrist as his cheek brushed her upper arm. He was murmuring something in French, words too rapid and soft for her to catch.

Nick twisted, restless, wanting but not knowing what she wanted. It didn't happen this way, not to her. Desire came up from some hidden void inside her, dividing into twin, scalding geysers of want and need. "G.o.d, is it always like this?"

"Only with you." His free hand landed on her shoulder, lifted, and moved to her waist, then her arm, then her cheek, the jerky, uncertain way someone might touch something they weren't quite sure was solid or real. The way you'd touch a dream. "Only now."

Everywhere his hand landed, her skin tingled and warmed. "This is crazy." An odd laugh escaped her. "What are you doing to me?""I don't know." Gabriel kept touching her in that strange, wondering fashion, and the warmth became heat, and the tingle deepened to an ache. Her mouth burned and her body shook. "Shout at me. Hit me. Run away from me, Nicola."

Much more of this and he'd need to run. "Gabriel."

His hands lifted away, and they were shaking. "Forgive me."

"I don't mean..." Incoherent now, she grabbed his hand and pressed it between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The weight and warmth steadied her, brought back a moment of rational thought. "Keep going."

"No." His fingers danced up to trace the hollow in the base of her throat. "As much as I wish to, we are strangers."

"We don't have to be." Not begging, demanding now, but she had to. Every time his hands left her, it hurt. "Please, Gabriel, I can't stand this. Do something."

"Calmez-vous." He used both hands now, stroking them from her ribs to her hips. "I will take care of you."

"Good. Great." Relief flooded her with new warmth, until he turned her away from him, placing her back to his chest and bracing her hands against the shiny-smooth bark of a beech tree. "Wrong side."

"Easier." He had the front of her jeans open and tugged them down.

Frustrated, Nick tried to turn. "d.a.m.n it, let me-"

"No," he breathed against her ear, holding her in place when she tried to let go and turn around toward him. "This way I cannot enrapture you."

Enrapture? She looked down, saw his hand spread over her abdomen, his palm covering her navel. He'd bunched her jeans and panties around her knees; his damp trousers pressed against her bare bottom. She held on to the beech's trunk and lifted one leg and then the other until she worked herself free of the tangle. She should have been embarra.s.sed by the way she spread her legs for him, but she wasn't.

If she wasn't enraptured, she would be in about five seconds.

Gabriel's left hand pulled her wet bra up, freeing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to his touch, while his right hand stroked down to trail his fingertips through the light patch of hair covering her s.e.x. He touched her slowly, reverently. The burn scars on his arms felt like calluses, gently rasping over her softer skin as he cupped her.

The abrasion of his scars roused her out of the sensual haze.

What was she doing? He was right; they were strangers. He was injured, blind, lost in the dark, probably in pain, and here all she could think about was f.u.c.king him.

But his cool, clever fingers were playing between her thighs, parting her and stroking her, and wanting trampled thinking as it threw itself at the rising heat.

"Close your eyes, cherie." His breath touched the side of her neck a moment before his mouth did. "Be with me in the dark."

Nick dug her fingernails into the glossy bark under her hands, her head falling back against his shoulder. Gabriel might be blind, but he knew exactly where he was on her, his long, insistent fingers finding every fold, every recess, painting them with the brush of his fingertips and the slick tempera of her desire.

"Like so." He breathed in. "Ah, cherie. You feel like a garden in the mist."She felt more like a waterfall studded with rocks. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s weren't large enough to fill his hand, but they felt heavier and harder under the slow ma.s.sage of his palm. She regretted that she didn't have more for him to touch, because the way he played with her tight nipples made her want to scream.

Nick jerked her hips in reaction when he penetrated her with two fingers and felt his erection press against the small of her back.

The edge of his palm nudged the top of her mound, exposing her c.l.i.t. The contact made her tighten around his fingers and twist against his palm.

"Feel me touching you," he murmured. "Give me what I want."

She felt him, and let him touch what he wanted, and panted and suffered through it, until the friction against her c.l.i.t and thrust of his fingers into her body brought her to the very edge.

He knew. His hand left her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and his arm lifted her, settling the separation of her a.s.s against the thick rod of his p.e.n.i.s. His fingers pushed deep as his mouth grazed the outer curve of her ear. "I have you. Come to me, ma bien-aimee."

That did it. Nick bit down on her lip in time to stop the shriek of pleasure, but her body convulsed, out of control now, and the heat exploded inside her, fire and rain and moonlight; she was caught in his arms, coming beneath his hands.

"Again." His voice became a thick, low purr sifting through her hair as he brought her down and back up, relentless, shoving her into the fire until she thought she might collapse. "Tres bien."

Unable to take any more, Nick dislodged his hand, thinking she might very well fall on her face and not get up for a week, wrung out and destroyed as she was by what he'd done with only his fingers. But she could still feel him against her, hard and unrelieved, as needy as she had been before he'd blown her mind and given her a personal tour of pleasure h.e.l.l.

Oh, no, that wouldn't do.

She pushed away from the tree, turning in his arms, her hand slipping between them.

The green glow of his eyes brightened for a moment before he tried to catch her wrist and stop her. "Non, you need not, cherie."

"Quit being polite. You need this." Good thing Father Claudio's trousers hung so loose on him; she didn't have to fumble with b.u.t.tons or a zipper. There he was, all that stiff, satiny length, and after the first exploratory stroke she gripped him in her fist.

"And you owe me."

As soon as she had him, he shuddered. His hips gave an involuntary jerk, pushing his c.o.c.k through the center of her grip. His foreskin felt like ribbed velvet. "It is not for you to do this."

"In America, we call it payback." She could feel how close he was; a couple of strokes and he'd go over. She leaned in. "Among other things." Working her hand up and down, she caressed him. The delicious friction and the urgency that racked his frame made her smile. "This is where you took me. Feel it the way I did."

It didn't take him long. His arms came around her and he went still, his p.e.n.i.s ramming between her fingers one last time before s.e.m.e.n jetted all over her hand. She milked him with her fist until he sagged, and then she went down with him, curling up beside him, still holding him in her hand.

"You did not have to do that," he said when he could speak again.

"I don't have to do anything." Nick stared up at the stars. "I wanted to."

s.e.x had never felt less complicated, and she wanted more. She wanted him on top of her, in her mouth, riding her a.s.s and squeezing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He was going to turn her into an animal.She was thinking about doing it again. She'd just engaged in a mutual j.e.r.k.-.o.f.f. session with a strange, injured vampire, and she couldn't wait to jump him a second time. What the h.e.l.l was wrong with her?

"I'm sorry. That was"-what could she even call it?-"rude."

"You must be very rude to me, then. Several times. Every day. My G.o.d." He shifted and made a sound. "I had forgotten how it feels."

She'd pleased him. This beautiful man, who was everything she wasn't, who'd endured nothing but pain, had come for her. She'd given him that much. She'd remember it forever.

He groaned, and she thought of his raw wounds. "Did I hurt you?"

"Hurt?" He rolled toward her, covering her hand with his. "No, cherie, no. You make me forget what that is."

"Okay." She closed her eyes, helpless to stop the tears, glad that he couldn't see them. "Okay."

Chapter 10.

"Will that be all, Mr. Cyprien?" the waiter asked as he finished placing the bottles of French wine in the rack behind the suite's wet bar.

"A moment, mon ami." Michael rested a hand on the man's shoulder, and watched his eyelids droop. "No need to speak of this delivery, or what you saw here. You will discard all records of it as well."

"No need." The man's head bobbed. "No records."

"Merci."

Marcella waited until the waiter silently exited before she came over and removed a sealed container from the refrigeration unit beneath the bar. Her movements, languid and negligent as they were, did not quite mask her restlessness. "When do we leave for Ireland?"

"Tomorrow night." He took the container from her and poured its contents, chilled human blood, into three crystal winegla.s.ses.

He diluted the thick fluid by adding a measure of burgundy. "If we are not discovered."

Phillipe joined them. In his hands he held reports faxed from Orlando. "Byrne has sent his trackers throughout the city. They have been unable to locate Alexandra's brother. There is no indication that anyone using his name or matching his description left the city."

John Keller had vanished on the day they had left America. Michael had suspected the former priest of walking out on their pact, until Byrne discovered that all of the security cameras in the parking garage had been disabled minutes before Keller had disappeared. As the Brethren did not know that Knight's Realm was owned and operated by the Darkyn, and Byrne controlled or monitored all transportation points around they city, that left only one possibility. "Richard arranged to have him taken."

"Keller may have chosen to abandon our cause," Marcella suggested. "He has no regard for the Kyn-"

"But he loves his sister, Cella, and he would not abandon her now." Michael handed one of the gla.s.ses of the bloodwine mixture to her. "Of that I am convinced. He would not leave except to go after her on his own."

"So Richard has him, and we must rescue both." She sipped from her gla.s.s and sighed. "The high lord still blames Keller for exposing your jardin in New Orleans, seigneur."

For the sake of his sygkenis, Michael had tried to protect the human priest from Richard's wrath by pa.s.sing along the medical research Alexandra had been conducting on the Kyn. Ironically that research had resulted in her kidnapping.

"Under the present circ.u.mstances," Phillipe said, "Father Keller is worth more to the high lord alive than dead."

Marcella drained her gla.s.s. "Unless Richard discovers we are in England."

"That will not happen, madam," Phillipe a.s.sured her.

Michael and his seneschal had gone to great lengths to conceal their presence from Richard's suzerain and their border sentries.

In addition to traveling mostly by day and using multiple false identifications, Michael had erased the memory of their arrival from the minds of every human with whom they came in contact since leaving America.

Usually Michael stayed at his private penthouse suite at the Savoy anytime he came to England, but they belonged to the suzerain of the London jardin. Michael had no desire to persuade Geoffrey into betraying his loyalty to the high lord. Instead, he had directed Phillipe to use contacts outside Geoffrey's influence to arrange accommodations, discreet transportation, and the other necessities for their journey.

Now Michael had to discover what he could about what was happening at Dundellan.

"I will question Father Leary now," he told his seneschal. "Make the final preparations for our journey." He glanced at Marcella.

"Do you know how to use a computer?"

She arched a dark eyebrow. "I am Kyn, my lord. Not a Mennonite."

"Bon. Check the e-mail and see if Valentin has sent copies of the floor plans for Dundellan. If he has not, check the medieval Web sites to see if anyone has drawn or scanned them." He nodded toward the laptop Phillipe had connected at the suite's elegantly appointed workstation, and then went over to Leary.

Since being brought to the suite, the Brethren priest had been sitting and watching a soccer match on television. As Michael approached him, he looked up and smiled. "Yes, my lord?"

"I must speak with you, Orson." Michael sat across from him and took off his jacket. Each day he had been separated from Alexandra had made his scent had grow deeper and stronger, and now it filled the room with the fragrance of roses in the sun.

"Can you not read his mind?" Marcella asked as she booted up the laptop.

"No." Michael gazed into the calm, peaceful eyes of the Brethren interrogator, watching as the human's pupils dilated. "That is not part of my talent."

"Then how is it that you make them forget things?" she asked.

"I cannot erase memories; my gift only finds and conceals them," he corrected. "The memories remain masked until I choose to lift the suppression."

Dark eyes shifted to Leary's benign countenance. "And if you do not lift it?"

"The memories are lost to the human forever." He knew Marcella had an aversion to using talent, as hers was particularly powerful. Still, he could not spend the rest of his time in England catering to his second's prejudices. "We each have our gifts, Cella. Perhaps you will allow me to use mine now, so that we may learn what we can before we leave for Ireland."

Leary's expression remained placid as Michael focused on him, and his pupils fully dilated as he succ.u.mbed to l'attrait. "Roses.

Pretty flowers."

"Yes, they are." The human appeared completely under his control now. "Tell me, Orson, what you do for the high lord Richard?"

"Anything he wants." Leary lifted his hands palms up. "Lord Tremayne commands; I obey."

"Do you pa.s.s information to him about the Brethren?"

"Once I did." Leary's eyes grew watery. "But no more."