Masks

  Auria stepped across the threshold, just down the hall from where Mircea was clutching his friend. “I win.”

  The door shut, and Bezio looked at him. “Looks to me like you won, son.”

  Mircea swallowed.

  Time to find out.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Naked and spread-eagled, Mircea fought uselessly against the invisible bonds that trapped him. Muscles bunched in his arms, his thighs bulged and strained, and he exerted enough force to punch through a brick wall. Yet nothing changed. Except that a slide of invisible strength tightened around his upper thighs, squeezing a warning as Auria approached the bed.

  She looked him over critically.

  “How are you doing this?” he demanded.

  “Age has its privileges.” She ran the back of a single nail up his length, adjusting it slightly, making it perfectly perpendicular. “As does youth.”

  Mircea wasn’t seeing a lot of privileges right now. The power that held him held all of him, making it impossible for him to do anything but lie there and shudder all over, uselessly. And watch as she put a dainty, silk-covered foot on the bed, and toyed with the ribbon holding up her stockings.

  They were fine white silk, instead of the more common linen or wool. And were knitted to better follow the shape of the leg, instead of woven. They had a pattern of vines and flowers across the tops and more down the sides, and had probably cost a month’s salary for a laborer.

  But that wasn’t what had his mouth going dry.

  He wanted to pull those garters off with his teeth. He wanted his hand to be the one to roll down the stockings, revealing dimpled knees, sweetly rounded calves, and trim ankles. He wanted his fingers to caress the arch of the foot before slowly pulling them off, exposing dainty white flesh, so sweet and so forbidden—

  The toenails were gilded.

  He closed his eyes.

  “The secret of passion is to make her want it,” she murmured. “Bring her to the brink and then deny her, over and over again. Until she is almost mad with desire. Until she can think of nothing and no one else.”

  “Is that what you do?” Mircea gritted out.

  “Of course.

  “It’s torture.”

  “It works.”

  “So does shared passion. So does genuine affection. So does mutual respect—”

  “That is for when you care about someone. Not for what we do.”

  “You don’t care about your clients?”

  “No. And neither will you, if you’re smart.”

  Mircea started to reply, but then the stocking, still warm from her body, was draped around his length.

  And the words died in his throat.

  “Make her forget the other men she knows,” Auria murmured, sliding the soft mass slowly around him. “The other experiences she’s had. They pale in comparison with this. There is only her, and you, and the need . . . growing . . . aching . . . desperate. . . .”

  Oh, he was desperate, Mircea thought, straining with everything he had against the hold she had on him.

  And going exactly nowhere.

  “. . . yet unfulfilled,” Auria said, sounding amused. “Give just enough to madden, never enough to satisfy.”

  “How about enough to live?” Mircea snarled, because a human would have had a heart attack by now.

  “I don’t think sexual frustration is one of the ways to kill a vampire.”

  “Maybe they need to update the list!”

  “Maybe you should tell the senator that, when next you see her.”

  “I don’t know that I’ll be seeing her—”

  “It’s only been four days,” she told him. “Just wait.”

  “—nor that I want to.”

  It was the truth. An inconvenient one, since convocation would be over soon and he was supposed to make his escape. An escape that would not work if he didn’t have a patron willing to protect him—and Bezio, and Jerome, if he wished to come—in Paris. He needed to see her, needed to somehow convince her to take them on, three useless vampires.

  But it wasn’t what he wanted to do. She was too powerful, too overwhelming. He was afraid of what she might want, and what he might get drawn into as a result.

  Mircea might not know what he wanted from this new life, but he was very clear on what he didn’t. And he didn’t want to be drawn into another political dynasty. To be under someone else’s control, to have their rules hedge him in, their decisions move his hand. To have their ambitions supersede everything he might value.

  He’d been that; he’d done that. His whole life had been as a pawn, being moved about by someone else’s will. His death wasn’t going to be, too.

  “I don’t want a master,” he said, and Auria laughed.

  “I think you actually mean it.”

  “I do. Why is that funny?”

  “It’s not. It’s . . . ironic. You don’t care anything about the opportunity you’ve been given, while I would give everything I have—”

  “For what?”

  “For a master’s touch,” she said, and straddled him.

  “You could have any master you want.” Mircea might not know vampire society, but he knew men. And, hell, probably most women. He couldn’t see too many people kicking Auria out of bed—or denying her whatever she asked.

  But she didn’t seem to agree.

  “Not any.”

  “Who would turn you down?”

  “One who already did.”

  It took Mircea a moment to realize what she meant. “But he threw you out! Tried to kill you—”

  “Doesn’t matter. It is our nature.”

  “It wouldn’t be mine!”

  “You don’t have a master,” Auria pointed out. “How would you know?”

  “But others here have. And I don’t see any of them mourning the ones who threw them out!”

  “I think Jerome does, a little. Although at least he has the consolation of death. His master is gone; he cannot get him back. They say it makes it easier.”

  “But . . . Paulo—”

  “And Zaneta and Danieli and the rest. Yes, I know. It doesn’t take everyone the same way.”

  “It would seem to be damned rare!”

  “Not really. I would say the opposite, in fact.”

  “Then where are all the heartbroken vamp—” Mircea began, before seeing the truth in her face.

  “Where do you think? You know how many die here, every day. How many more never make it this far? And many of them are not hunted. There are those who find that sort of thing amusing, certainly. But others simply find them . . . sad. They don’t want them, but they don’t want to harm them, either. Some even help them get this far.”

  Trust him not to have found any of those, Mircea thought, grimacing. But he should have known there would be some. Vampires weren’t the two-dimensional monsters of his childhood fables, mindless, greedy, and savage. But a complicated mix, some decent, some anything but, just like the humans they had once been.

  It had been Auria’s luck, and his, to see the worst side of the race. But there was good in it, too. He’d seen that as well, recently. And there could be more of it, much more, if—

  His thoughts broke off when she suddenly took him inside her, in a single, unexpected movement that left him gasping.

  But not in pleasure. After being deprived for so long, after aching for so long, the overwhelming wash of sensation was almost another form of torture. One made worse by the fact that he still couldn’t move.

  He couldn’t slide his hands up the back of her thighs, and grasp the taut mounds above. Couldn’t kiss the softer mounds in front, or mouth the pale pink nipples. Couldn’t touch the long line of her body as she stretched up, finding the ring at the peak of his sloping ceiling, which had once supported a lantern.

&nb
sp; And which now supported the weight of a beautiful courtesan as she began to undulate.

  She closed her eyes, one slender arm holding the ring, the other draped behind her head, holding back the glorious weight of her hair. Letting him see everything he couldn’t have. Like the faint sheen of sweat that began to slick her skin. . . .

  In desperation, Mircea looked away, but it didn’t help.

  There was nothing else like the feel of a woman’s body. No other pleasure came close to the supple, yielding strength of it, the warm, satiny feel of it, the rich, intoxicating scent. He didn’t think he could ever get enough of the little sounds they made, the feel of them squirming against him, the surge of pride that came from making them—

  “God!” Mircea almost came off the bed when a small tendril of her power suddenly coiled around his base, denying his release.

  And then things became stranger still when it began to move as she did. Expanding and contracting, forcing him to meet her thrust for thrust. Making his own participation in this almost irrelevant.

  I’ll take you, she’d said, and he suddenly, vividly, realized what she’d meant. He was there for her pleasure, not the other way around. And it felt . . . he couldn’t . . . this wasn’t how . . . unhh.

  “The ones you see here are those who do not feel that way,” she told him, continuing their former conversation as if nothing was happening. “Or are those who decided to live in spite of it.”

  Mircea stared up at her. The damned woman wasn’t even breathing hard!

  “Perhaps . . . it will fade . . . in time,” he said, because if she could, he could.

  “It doesn’t. How can it? It’s part of you, they’re part of you—literally, for they gave you life. It is their blood that animates you, that called you back from death. You are meant to be together, your whole being knows it.”

  “I can’t . . . imagine feeling . . . that way.”

  “Can’t you?” She changed position suddenly, forcing a groan out of him. “It’s something like that,” she told him. “But all the time. But not just physical; it’s mental, emotional—almost spiritual. An utterly helpless longing to touch him, to be beside him, just to hear his voice. Even when you know he doesn’t care as you do, even when you realize that it’s all on your side, it doesn’t lessen the need. It’s the worst thing in the world when they reject you.”

  “Anyone . . . who could reject you . . . is a fool,” Mircea snarled.

  “Then the world is full of fools,” she said lightly.

  And the next second, she was at his throat.

  Soft lips instead of hard teeth, but still, so close. It sent a shiver through him that resonated from his body and up into hers. He knew she felt it when she smiled, ferally.

  “Which do you want more,” she asked. “Blood or sex? And think carefully, for you can only have one.”

  Mircea opened his mouth to say sex, because clearly.

  But then he closed it again as that long, white throat slid along his. He could feel her heartbeat, a quick flutter against his skin, and then slower, heavier, until it synchronized with his own. Until it felt like his own, like his blood was in her body, was in her body and was waiting to be reclaimed.

  He felt his fangs descend.

  But it was hers that scraped against his skin, not tearing, not even pricking. Just brushing, delicate, teasing, maddening. He heard himself growl, a frightening sound. He hadn’t lost that much control since—

  He tried to rein himself in, but she was doing it again. Sliding her throat along his, her pulse along his, and now her body as well. Slick, wet friction and undulating muscles and a pulse pounding, pounding, pounding in his throat, in his head, in his—

  “Only one,” she whispered, and it was absurd.

  “I can’t—”

  “You can. You did it with the senator, did you not?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Sex without blood is meaningless for most of us. Blood magnifies everything in our world, including pleasure. But, apparently, you are different.”

  “I’m not—”

  “But you are. You’ve demonstrated that twice now. So, for you, only one.”

  Her lips caught his, in a sweet caress that was nothing like what he wanted. It was soft and gentle when he wanted hard, when he wanted piercing, when he wanted warm and metallic and—

  “Only one,” she told him, sucking right over his pounding pulse, pulling it into her mouth, letting him feel her hunger, her need—

  Only to let it out again, unbroken.

  “Only one,” she murmured, as he choked.

  “Only one,” and she sped up, taking it from torture to something for which he had no words.

  “Only one,” she warned, as finally, finally, she released him, the power snapping that had held him down, that had kept him captive, that had kept him from—

  “Only one,” she laughed, as his fangs slid into her skin, at the same moment that his body surged into her flesh, as he took from her and spilled into her in equal measure. This was how it was supposed to be, this was what he was, what he’d been driven mad for, this, and this, and this. . . .

  Moments later, she had finally lost her breath, but not the wicked sparkle in her eyes. “You really are . . . bad . . . at taking orders,” she told him.

  “And not likely to get any better,” Mircea growled, and rolled her into the sheets.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The wait ended the next night.

  Mircea awoke to the feel of something hitting his chest. And to Paulo’s voice saying: “Get up. She wants you.”

  He blinked his eyes open to find himself clutching a large, linen wrapped package—for an instant. Until it was snatched from his grasp and torn open. And something softer than down, something like a cloud in cloth form, was spilling over the bed.

  “Oh,” someone breathed, as Mircea’s eyes finally managed to focus.

  He sat up, finding himself clasping a doublet of deep, midnight blue velvet. The pile was shot through with tiny threads of silver, and scattered along the threads were glittering objects that gleamed in the candlelight, like dark fire. He ran his fingers over them, and finally realized that he couldn’t see them well because they were the same color as the cloth—a blue so dark they were almost black.

  As sapphires often are, he thought dizzily.

  And then Jerome—and it was Jerome, sitting on the bed, gray eyes huge—pulled out a length of snowy white linen—a shirt. It was massive, easily using as much material as a woman’s chemise. But it needed to be, to fit through the dozens of slashings on the doublet.

  And then a matching suede and velvet cioppa appeared. And then a pair of hosen so fine and light that Mircea was concerned he might rip them just by holding them. But they stretched when he gave a tug, with a tensile strength he hadn’t expected.

  There were other things, too—belt, shoes, gloves, even a hat. A velvet slouch with a jeweled buckle, the centerpiece a sapphire the size of his thumbnail. The whole together was an outfit a Doge might have envied—or a prince. And quite, quite illegal for someone of his current status to wear.

  Fortunately, Venetians treated the sumptuary laws with the same respect they did the rest of the legal code.

  “These are for me?” Mircea asked, looking up.

  Paulo frowned at him. “Who else?”

  “They’re from the senator?”

  “Again, who else? Over there.” The last was directed at two maids who had just come in bearing hot water and towels, and making the tiny room exceedingly crowded.

  Paulo looked at Jerome pointedly, but the smaller vampire didn’t budge.

  “You said you didn’t ask for anything,” he said, looking covetously at the expensive pile on the bed.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You never said a word, and yet she sends you th
is?” Jerome clearly didn’t believe him.

  That was all right; Mircea didn’t half believe it himself.

  “She sent it because she wants him to look like he belongs at her table,” Paulo said, ducking his face into the basin.

  Mircea finally noticed that the blond was only half dressed, and that his hair looked like birds had been nesting in it. He was also trying to shrug on clothes and make his ablutions even while bossing the two of them around. “Her table?” Mircea asked.

  “We’re going to a party. Along with half the senators in town, apparently. So are you,” he added, scrubbing his face at Jerome. Who looked up, blinking.

  “Me? Me? She asked for—”

  “Don’t be absurd. She asked for him, and for two other courtiers to balance out her table. She’s having a banquet, and has too many women.”

  “Senator . . . banquet . . . too many women . . .” Jerome’s eyes glazed.

  It did not make Paulo happy.

  “This could make us,” he said, snatching the other vampire up. “Or the opposite. If you can’t behave tonight—”

  “Why would you assume that?” Jerome asked, affronted.

  Paulo made a disgusted noise.

  It was Jerome’s turn to scowl. “If you’re so concerned, why are you asking me?”

  “You’re the only one left!” Paulo let go of Jerome to attack the rats nest on his head with a comb. “People of a certain station don’t trouble themselves with how much inconvenience they cause others. We were only just now informed, and the banquet starts in an hour! Danieli already left for an appointment, and there’s no way to fetch him back in time.”

  “But I don’t have anything to wear—”

  “You have two new suits!”

  “—one of which needs mending and the other isn’t nearly fine enough for a senator’s table. But if I could borrow your green one—”

  “The olive?”

  “Don’t be silly, can you see my complexion in olive? The brocaded silver.”