Chapter Fifteen
His body trembled with need at the sight of her. The entire morning, he hadn’t been able to think of anything but silken black hair, sultry lips, and milk-white skin, yearning to return to Winter Hill. To her. Finding her standing in the yard watching him draw closer, a tender expression of welcome on her heart-shaped face, constricted his lungs in a trap of her sweet making.
He couldn’t think, moving on instinct alone as he leapt to the ground, tossed the reins, closed the distance, and wrapped her in a tight embrace, slanting his mouth over hers in a breath-stealing kiss. He swallowed her cry of surprise and groaned when she opened her mouth, teasing her tongue along his. He couldn’t let go even if someone had bludgeoned him over the head. He’d lost his bloody mind, his need for her bordering on insanity. After he’d stroked his tongue sufficiently enough to remind her what he wanted, to placate the beast within, he pulled away.
Her eyes dropped, a smile lingering. She pushed her palms against his chest. “Please, Your Grace.” Her voice a brittle sound.
He released her, noting the adolescent snickers in the yard. The guards had enough sense to disperse and busy themselves elsewhere. Grant stood to the side, arms crossed. With a shake of his head, he called to them. “Come on, boys. Let’s see what Olog might have for us in the kitchen.”
Friedrich winked over Brenna’s head at Caden, whose boyish grin widened as they scampered off with little Izzy trailing them.
“Come,” he said, taking her hand and leading her toward the wrought-iron archway marking the entrance to the formal gardens beyond the stables.
She didn’t protest, a pink blush splotching her cheeks and ample bosom, more of it showing in the dress he’d had made for her a week ago. She fell in step next to him in swift strides. As soon as they’d passed through the archway and into the hedge maze, more white than green, she jerked her hand away and turned on him.
“Friedrich. Do not ever kiss me like that again.”
“I would apologize, but I can’t help feeling a touch aggressive at the sight of you.” He twined a lock of her ebony hair at the temples. “I’ll try to be more gentle next time.”
She swatted at his hand teasingly. “That’s not what I mean and you know it. You can’t kiss me like that in front of the children. Never mind your entire personal guard.”
Unperturbed, he slid both hands along her waist to her back, clasping his fingers to lock her against him. “Why not? Are we hiding our affinity for each other from the world?”
“Affinity?” she arched a brow. “Your Grace, let me—”
“What happened to Friedrich?”
She scoffed, the heels of her hands on his shoulders as if to push him away though she didn’t. “I don’t know! You tell me. Has he lost his mind?”
He dipped lower, sliding his lips against the soft patch of skin beneath her ear, inhaling her clean, night-flower scent. “Yes.” Unable to stop himself, he scraped his razor-sharp fangs against her skin, scoring lightly just enough to see red pebbles in a line. “He has lost his mind,” he whispered on a rasp. Her fingers curled at his shoulders. She sighed when he tongued the strip of blood away. “He has lost his body and soul, too.” He sucked her pretty earlobe, going rock-hard at her whimpering gasp. “You’ve gotten your claws in deep, kitten.” He trailed his mouth up her jaw, sliding his fingers up her nape and cupping her head to keep her where he wanted her. “And I’m bleeding inwardly.” Gently, he nipped at her bottom lip, sucking it between his lips and letting it slide out slowly. “I’m quite ready to die at your feet, if you’ll only give yourself to me.” He continued his torturous nibbles of her lips, never sinking in. Supping at her mouth with tender bites.
“I’m not sure that’s a wise idea,” she said, a hand slipping up into his hair.
“Yes. The wisest.” He firmed his lips against hers, sliding his tongue in deep, then he pulled back and skated to the other cheek. A growl rumbled in his chest. “I want all of you.”
“I don’t understand,” she said breathily as his lips trailed across the apple of her cheek and caressed both eyelids.
His leisurely exploration of her lovely face with his lips didn’t calm his nerves. Rather the opposite. Each press of his mouth lit a spark that heated his skin, flaring to life the fire he held for her, kiss by kiss. From the rosy pink blotching her skin, she seemed to be experiencing the same. He’d dreamed about being between her milky thighs all night. He’d thought the search and exercise all morning would ease his torment, blast the constant simmering heat from his blood. But no. Like a hypnotic drug, she intoxicated him, robbing him of reason, tempting him to the brink of sanity.
“You don’t understand?” he asked, sweeping his lips at her temple, nuzzling a loose curl.
“No.” Her voice dropped.
“Then let me be clear.” He returned to her luscious lips. “I want to lick and suck you until all I can smell or taste is the salty-sweet of your skin, your lips, your thighs, your—”
“Don’t say it,” she snapped breathlessly, arching a brow in warning.
He smiled at her. The velvet-brown of her eyes ensnared his very soul. If she had any idea what power she held over him, she could unman him in a second if she refused him, denied him. For he was quite sure he’d fall to his knees and beg. God, what was happening to him? All these years of coldly blocking any woman from entangling his heart, and here he was throwing his vow of eternal bachelorhood into the wind. Despite his haunted past, he found himself wanting to open the door he’d bolted shut the night his parents died. Steeling his resolve, he crossed through, letting his heart guide him for once in his godforsaken life.
“I want you. Only you and no other.”
Her gaze remained warm while her words jabbed with challenge. “The Duke of Winter Hill, notorious lothario who chooses a different maid every week for a new flavor of blood and to warm his bed is vowing to be monogamous?” Her gaze dropped to his lips where his fangs were no doubt in plain view. “I find that rather difficult to believe.”
She turned and walked briskly up the path toward the temple-like gazebo standing at the center of a square of hedges, the white sky and snow-covered garden creating a pillow around the strong stone architecture. He prowled slowly after her. Her remark should’ve cut him, for it was true he was renowned for being a seducer. But this was not new news. However, her stiff back, swift gait, and swinging arms declared her irritation about the topic. If he was a betting man, he’d say her vexation stemmed from jealousy.
He understood that feeling all too well. The thought of another man looking at her or touching her pushed his primal instincts to the forefront. He wanted to maim and claw and savage any man who thought to take what was his. But she wasn’t his. Not yet.
He sidled closer behind her as she stepped up into the cloister beneath the stone dome and moved with her into the shadows. While she trailed her fingers along the sculpted border of intricate vines, he wondered if she realized she walked willingly into this secluded space, like the doe picking her way from the sunlit meadow into the dark line of trees, unaware that the lion waited for her there.
While his blood pumped faster, urging him to pounce with swift expediency, he held himself in control and finally replied coolly, “Believe it, Brennalyn. That is my wish.”
She spun next to a fluted column on the far side, the shadow of Pearl Tower an indefinite haze over the garden. She set her jaw tight, her fathomless gaze growing distant as she withdrew farther from him. Damn her.
“I can’t, Your Grace.”
Raw anger sparked a fire in his blood. He tried to hold back his ire, but it was like wrangling a windstorm. “Back to Your Grace? Using my title won’t put enough distance between us, kitten. I know what you taste like.”
Her dark lashes dropped, grazing her snow-white complexion in an obscene contrast of beauty that punched him in the gut.
“Just because you’ve tasted my blood, my skin, it doesn’t—”
“I’ll be tasting a whole lot more soon enough.”
She glared at him, her lips pressed together. “Not if I don’t want you to.”
His heart sank. He faltered, unable to speak for a moment then finally asked in one, shaky breath, “Are you saying you don’t want me? You don’t want what we’ve started?”
“I’m not saying that at all. You’re not listening. I’m telling you I can’t promise myself to you.”
“And why the hell not? You can’t tell me you’re considering dabbling with the mason?”
“George?” she lifted her brows and her dark gaze in surprise. “Oh, heavens no.”
“Good.”
“I can’t be with anyone. Not like that.”
Frustrated, he combed a hand through his hair. “Why the devil not? Before we were interrupted last night, you were quite eager to be with me like that.”
Her mouth snapped shut as she jutted her chin in the air. “Yes. You’re right. I would’ve consented to a night’s pleasure. So what? Men do it all the time. You do it all the time. It doesn’t mean I’m in need of a man to take care of me. To own me.”
“Perhaps not. But a little extra protection wouldn’t go amiss, especially since you seem so damn determined to put yourself in the line of fire like with this scheme of becoming the White Lily.”
Splotchy color flushed her cheeks, her dark eyes glinting like ice. “Don’t you dare use that against me. Many of my people are putting their lives and their families’ lives in danger because of the vainglorious vampire monarchy trying to stomp us beneath their foot. Your monarchy.”
He bent one leg leisurely and tucked his hands in his pockets as if they were discussing whether it would snow today or not. His casual demeanor belied his emotions, for he wanted to snatch her and shake sense into her. “You know as well as I do that I am not remotely in the same frame of mind as my royal relatives.”
She paced to one side, throwing up her arms. “I know that.”
“Then why throw it in my face?”
“I’m just…just angry because…” She stopped pacing and stared back at him.
“Because? Why is it so distasteful for you to be tied to me?” He couldn’t count the number of times women had betrothed their everlasting love to him in his bed, begging to become his one and only bleeder and lover. He’d never once considered acquiescing to their pleas. And here he was, pleading this small, low-born, schoolteacher to be his one and only paramour. Yet she wholeheartedly rejected him. It wasn’t enough. That was the problem. Lovers could leave.
And that’s when a realization slapped him in the face. He didn’t want her as his lover. He wanted her completely. Wholly. In every way. And for the world to know it.
“Marry me,” he blurted.
Her head snapped to him as if she’d been struck. “What did you say?”
He stepped closer but still kept his hands in his pockets though he itched to touch her. “Marry me,” he repeated more softly. “Please.”
“Your Grace. Now I’m afraid you have gone mad. You know I can’t. I’m already married.”
That reality had soured in his gut from the moment she admitted it was true. Another man had taken her as wife, vowed his love and protection to her till death do them part. Then he’d abandoned her because of the ridiculous idea she was flawed as a barren woman. He wanted to strangle the fool there and then for making Brennalyn believe anything other than the truth. She was perfect. In every way.
“I’ll have it annulled.”
“On what grounds?”
“Does it matter? I’ll find a reason. Abandonment sounds good enough to me.”
Her mouth dropped open at the reminder, but he was in no mood for flowery promises. The idea that she thought to stop what was happening between them before it had even gotten started galled him to the core. A tremulous sensation that felt an awful lot like panic twisted in his gut. He teetered on a cliff.
“Why would you want to marry me? So you can have the privilege of telling me what clothes to wear?”
With a casual shrug belying his inner turmoil, he said, “Among other things.”
Her frosty breath steamed in the wintry air as she fixed a disbelieving expression upon him. She narrowed her eyes. “You can’t marry me. Law forbids it.”
“Damn the law.”
“It must be nice to flout the law and do as you please.”
“It is actually.” He sauntered closer.
“I’m sure your uncle would love that sentiment, you marrying a lowly schoolteacher. Especially one with a hobby of circulating revolutionary propaganda, which he would discover as soon as he was within sniffing distance of me.”
“I’d never let my bastard of an uncle in the same room as you. Not without me at your side to protect you.” He recognized his beast growling out the words.
“It doesn’t matter. This argument is pointless. A piece of paper severing my marriage to Elliott won’t change the fact that I have no desire ever to marry again. Not you. Not anyone.”
It was Friedrich’s turn to feel the sting of an invisible slap. “You can’t possibly mean that. You would rather toil your life away in the schoolhouse and raise children completely alone rather than receive the protection and care of a royal duke?” He made a frustrated sound that sounded rather more than a little haughty. “I don’t believe it.”
“Well, believe it. I’m sure it’s rather difficult for the almighty Friedrich Volya, Duke of Winter Hill, to comprehend that he can’t have everything he wants, but that, Your Grace, is my wish.”
She crossed her arms, plumping up her beautiful breasts. His gaze caressed the milky slopes in a lingering sweep. She uncrossed her arms quickly, clasping her hands into her skirt.
She cleared her throat and tried for a more civilized tone. “While we’re on the subject of ownership, Your Grace, I want my dresses back.”
The piercing sting of denial melded into sharp superiority, pushing his hostility higher. He wanted to throw her over his knee and spank her for her defiance, then kiss the calm expression from her bewitching face. She might be right. He may very well be losing his mind, for he suddenly found a dark thrill in having taken her clothes and ordering new ones from the dressmaker without her permission.
He chuckled, sounding both sinister and seductive. “Well, I don’t want to give them back.”
She scoffed, one hand on her hip. “Why not?”
“Because I hate the way they imprison you in a hideous, gray shell. Why do you wear dresses as ghastly as that?”
“They’re not ghastly. They’re proper. And modest.”
“That’s one way to describe them.” Behind his flippant words was the constant prick of pain she’d settled in his breast, a new unfamiliar feeling called rejection.
“Whatever you think of them is irrelevant. I want them back.”
She narrowed her eyes. He eased in close. She backed into the column of the gazebo, her anger throwing up a wall in front of him, which cut him deeper than her words. He hardly recognized his own voice when he spoke, the soft timbre a roll of tightly controlled emotion. “Fine. You can hide yourself behind drab dresses and the pretense that you are an independent yet lonely widow who needs no one in this world if it makes you feel better.” He swallowed the pain and gave her the honesty she deserved, not the prickly words of an angry, rejected suitor. “You know, I learned something that night in the carriage while I was drowning in the scent of your blood and your sex. You want to know what that is?”
She didn’t answer at first, her breath coming in quick succession. “Wh-what?”
His vampire senses burned like a bonfire, vibrating on the surface, scraping to be released. But he kept it all encased behind a calm mask, letting her see his sincerity, but not the pain she caused him.
“I want you, Brennalyn,” he whispered softly. “Not for one night. Not for one week. But for as long as I draw breath.” With one last lingering look into those round, dark eyes that had enslaved him, he marched away to the castle.