He did not care. His only interest in Clio Thornton was in keeping her alive and out of trouble while he found the vampire. Tonight he was going to ask her questions and she was damn well going to answer them. Tomorrow he would damn well catch the damned vampire. And then Clio Thornton would be safely out of his damn life forever.
Forever.
By the time they got home, Clio had been semiconscious. Despite her protests, Miles had ordered her into his damn bedroom to take a bath and change her damn clothes. She was filthy and her gown had literally fallen to pieces when she was dragged off her horse. He was not surprised that she obeyed him. Obedience never surprised him.
But he was surprised now when he looked up and saw her standing on the threshold of his room.
DANGER!!!
The air in the chamber behind her was still steamy from her bath, and seemed to cling to her in a glowing aura. Her long straight hair hung loose over her shoulders, and two thin braids framed her face. She was wearing one of the gowns he had ordered for her, the dark purple one. It was cut significantly lower than her old dresses, and was significantly more fitted. Where her previous attire left almost everything to the imagination simply by nature of its shapelessness, this seemed designed to outdo the imagination with its devilishly engineered lines.
If she had been beautiful before, now she was staggering.
Miles barely noticed.
Not the way the gown brought out the deep purple flecks in her brown eyes. Not the subtle curve of her breasts, framed by the V of the bodice into a shadowy, fragrant valley. Not the grace of her neck, which would really look better with the Loredan amethysts around it. None of it. Let whomever she was in love with drape her with his family jewels. Miles was too damn angry at her, and if she thought that appearing in a new dress and looking like some kind of goddess was going to make him rise from his seat and take her in his arms and beg to be allowed to make love to her and forget all about his wrath, she was wrong. He scowled at her darkly and tightened his grip on the restraining arms of his chair.
Clio swallowed hard and fortified herself with a deep breath, telling herself she was not disappointed. She had never worn a gown like the one she was wearing now, of fine silk, beautifully cut by a master designer. By the standards of current fashion, its single color and the gem-less hem of the skirt were very plain, but Clio thought it the most glorious garment she had ever beheld. Slipping it on had been an almost erotic experience. The silk was incredibly thick and smooth and cool against her skin, like a caress. It rustled every time she moved and seemed to float around her. For the first time in her life, as she surveyed herself in the mirror that had been placed against one wall of Miles’s bedchamber that day, she felt elegant. And graceful. And almost lovable.
For a moment, as she had gazed at her reflection, she began to hope it could be like her dream, the dream she had begun having ten years earlier. It began with her gliding into a room. Over the years it had changed—initially, with her limited experience, the room had been a kitchen, the only place she had ever been comfortable. Next, fueled by the stories she read in news sheets, it had been a crowded ball room with a secret alcove off the side filled with padded chaise lounges. Now it was the outer chamber of Miles’s apartment, the room where he was diligently working at the round, leather-topped table. But no matter the room, the dream was always the same. He would look up, and his heart would stop beating and she could see in his eyes that he thought her beautiful. “Clio,” he would whisper, saying her name with reverence. “Clio Thornton, you are spectacular.” Then he would cross to her and take her in his arms and say, “I want to make love to you right here, right now.”
But given the look he was leveling at her, that hardly seemed possible. There was no spark of recognition, no moment when he looked up and his heart stopped beating. His eyes made it clear that what he was seeing was a drab woman foolishly garbed in a dress designed for a princess. She looked idiotic, and out of place, and clumsy. And as if to confirm all of that, she tripped for no reason as she moved into the room.
“We’ll have to have that gown shortened,” he said coolly, and it was the only evidence she had that he had even noticed what she was wearing. Then he looked back down at the papers that were spread over the table. “In half an hour we will dine together and discuss your behavior tonight, and in the future. Until then, I am busy. You may amuse yourself as you wish so long as you do not leave this apartment.”
You are clumsy and foolish and silly, Clio reminded herself as she moved numbly toward the chair on the other side of the table and sank into it. Just like Justin had always said.
Justin. What had he been doing tonight? She found it hard to believe that he was trying to save her, despite his words. But if he was not saving her, then he was kidnapping her, and that was even harder to imagine. That Justin had never loved her was clear; why he would bother to risk his life trying to get her was not. He seemed so much smaller and less worldly when she had seen him tonight than she remembered. Perhaps that was why she had not recognized him before. Because now she was almost positive that it was he who had been the man in the red doublet, the one she suspected of pushing her into the street in front of Dearbourn Hall two days earlier. The day she had come to see her grandmother. The day she had kissed Miles on the street.
If only she were not wearing the ridiculous dress, then maybe she could sit comfortably and figure all this out. She wished that Toast had not been sent to sleep in Corin’s chambers, wished that somehow she was not entirely alone with Miles. Wished that her best friend was not a monkey. She felt her lower lip begin to tremble and commanded it to cease. She would not break down in front of Miles. Her eye fell on his copy of A Compendium of Vampires then, and she opened it to the page that was marked with a tightly braided yellow ribbon. She would work. It would be a perfect distraction. There had been something tugging at her mind all day, a persistent annoyance, the subconscious knowledge that a fact or an idea was out of place, and maybe, just maybe if she concentrated on the book it would come to her. Not cry, work. The words on the page were familiar to her, she had read the passage a dozen times, but she forced herself to study them anyway.
“Concerning the Vampire, t’are those who say he is e’en such a one as rises from the dead, but this is wrong, for the Vampire is a living being, and takes to his blood sucking so that he may prosper, and grow stronger, from others. For him, the blood is as food for us, and he must have it, lest he weaken and die. This is the cause that he shall be known to strike in a regular way, just as we must eat our victuals and drink ale at our regular times or we will perish. So that he will suck blood every day or every week, as he list, but regular like always, else he will be sick unto death.”
Clio paused here to assess if she felt “sick until death” from lack of blood sucking. She did feel sick, there was no question about that, but she thought it had more to do with Miles than with any absence of human blood in her diet. Not really relieved, she read on.
“This nourishment he taketh only by night, being a creeture who loves the darkness, and thrives upon it. So that as the Moon, no longer young, waneth in her course and grow slimmer, even so the Vampire grows fatter, which is to say, more powerful.”
She glanced at Miles, considering telling him she thought it barbaric to treat books as if they were scrap paper and underline things in the text, as he so clearly had in this passage—and why only every few words? Very distracting—but he was not looking at her.
“And on every such night as there is no Moon, when between her monthly courses she doth hide her face, on that night will the Vampire be at his most powerful. Woe awaits he who thinks he can strike the Vampire down on such a night, for he has the power of the Devil in him most strongly then, and will be invincible.”
What would it be like to be invincible, she wondered. There were a few things she might try if she were invincible like—
She forced her eyes back to the page.
“And I say ‘
he’ but there is also the other kind, the female or ‘she-vampire’ who is the same every respect, save this one: that she is far more dangerous. For though she look like a comely woman she hath the strength of ten men when the bloode is in her, and may do bold acts, and daring.”
Bold acts and daring. If she were looking for evidence that she was not the vampire, she had just found it. The female vampire was prone to bold and daring acts and she felt prone to neither of those things. If she were bold and daring, she would march over to Miles, tell him that it was wrong to write in his books and also casually mention that she wanted him to make love to her, and see what happened. But she knew what would happen. He would laugh at her. He, who had made love to the most beautiful women in England, would want nothing to do with her. She had been a fool to think he might. What was she? A dull, poor, plain, unwanted, unlovely woman who no one had ever bothered to wish a happy birthday and whose only real friends were a bunch of equally unwanted and possibly insane people, and a monkey. What would the Viscount of Dreams want with her?
But the night before, for just a moment in the alcove—
Clio’s indignation flared. It really was not fair of him to act the way he had toward her one night, to touch her and kiss her and say—say whatever he had said, if he was just going to glare at her the next day. How dare he treat her that way? Very well, he was angry at her, but as far as she could see he had no right to be. He was just as much to blame about her faked escape from his apartment as she was, maybe even more. After all, if he had not locked her up as a prisoner she would not have had to escape. If he had not made it so steadfastly clear that he intended to ignore her wishes and demean her ideas, then she might have consulted him. They were supposed to be partners, not jailer and prisoner.
And even if he was not attracted to her, he did not have to treat her like a baby sheep who needed constant shepherding, incapable of knowing its own mind or protecting itself from dangerous wolves. She wanted only one kind of protection from him: protection of others from herself. Despite the fact that she felt neither bold nor daring, she could not yet discount the fact that she might be the vampire. But that was all she wanted. And that should not interfere with her investigation in the least.
She was just marshalling her arguments when his voice broke into her thoughts.
“It is time for us to talk,” he said, rising and walking around the table so that he was standing in front of her.
She raised her chin and looked at him defiantly. “I completely agree. And I already know what you are going to say.”
Miles raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
There was something about having him look at her that made her stomach flutter. “Yes. And I do not feel I owe you an apology for dragging you out of here today. You left me no choice. You treated me unfairly. I thought we were supposed to be partners but instead I was your prisoner.”
He seemed to consider, not so much her words as her, and she could tell he found her lacking. “It is an interesting point. But you must admit you got me out of the house under false pretences. It would seem to me that partners should not keep secrets from one another.”
She cleared her throat. What had she been meaning to say? “In the interests of having no secrets, I shall tell you that I am very mad at you.”
His face was a cold mask. “Really? Why?”
His expression made Clio shudder and for a moment she could not remember. “Because you have not let me pursue my investigation. Because you have treated me like a baby sheep.”
“I see. A baby sheep.” He bent toward her so their faces were almost touching and his eyes were hooded. “Exactly what would you have me treat you like, Lady Thornton?”
Clio could feel his breath on her cheek, could smell him, his unmistakable smell, an impossible mixture of hazelnuts and virility. Her heart was racing and her breathing was shallow. “Like a person. Like a woman,” she said.
“Ah,” Miles replied, a long exhaled syllable.
“Ah? Is that all you can say?” Clio was outraged. “My lord, your behavior to me is absolutely unacceptable.”
Miles scrutinized her and she could see a vein in his jaw throbbing. “And just how should I behave, Lady Thornton?”
“With respect,” she said forcefully. “You should share your information with me. And consult me about the investigation. Not pace around me as if I were an exhibit at the fair.”
“Share information,” Miles repeated as if the words were scalding his tongue. “Very well, Lady Thornton, I will share some information with you. I will share with you the fact that you were wrong about what I was going to say before.”
“I was?”
“Yes.” He paused. “I was not going to ask for an apology.”
“You weren’t?”
“No.” Miles straightened himself to his full imperious height. “I have no use for your apology, and only a fool asks for what he knows he will not get. No, I was going to ask—” He gazed down at her face, her lips slightly parted, her eyes expectant, wondering. And purple.
Miles’s mind took flight. There were a thousand strong reasons why he should not do what he was about to do, and not one of them was powerful enough to stop him. Lowering himself onto one knee so their faces were level, he brushed the lock of hair from his forehead and said, “I was going to ask if I could make love to you.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Impossible,” Clio breathed and she realized she had been swallowing back hiccups for the previous five minutes.
Miles recoiled. His expression grew instantly distant, walled. “Of course. In that case, we should get back to our investig—”
Clio brought her lips to his with a hunger born of ten years of dreaming and Miles responded by sweeping her into his arms and holding her tight. He had told himself that it was not her that he desired but something else, something no one could give him. But he had suspected, with instincts honed through years of studying defenses, that he was lying to himself. And now, feeling her against him, he knew.
He pulled away to look at her. For one moment the wall that was always there vanished and in his eyes Clio saw a swirling mixture of desire and awe and pain and something else. Then his lips crushed hers again, and she saw nothing at all.
Miles covered her with lavish kisses, hundreds of them, her cheeks, the hollow below her throat, sampling her, memorizing her. Her flavor overwhelmed him, her suppleness, her willingness. His tongue licked her lips, urging them apart. Never had anything, anyone, felt so right to him. Clio Thornton was not a woman, she was the woman. The woman he wanted, the woman he needed.
Time was suspended as he held her against him, but when her lips opened to his it began again, hurrying, insistent, implacable. They had no time to lose. As if she felt the urgency, too, Clio grabbed for the laces of his breeches, fumbling with inexpert fingers, giving him half caresses that made him gasp. Miles reached down to help her, his fingers wrapping around hers, their hands getting in the way of one another, until clumsily, laughing together, shyly and boldly at once, they had unloosed and untied and unhooked everything that kept them apart. The clothes between them fell away, stripping away all reserve, and they stood together, wondering at one another, first apart, then skin on skin, warm tight planes pressed against each other as closely as possible.
Miles was more beautiful and awe inspiring than any of Clio’s dreams had prepared her for. She ran her hands up his back, along his shoulders, tracing the lines of the muscles of his stomach, their perfection only enhanced by the deep scar that cut across them. His body was astonishing, powerful and firm and warm and soft and trembling and precious. She felt his heart beating in his chest, against hers, pounding in time with hers. She wanted to know everything about him, explore every part of him, right away, instantly. She dropped one of her hands down and timidly touched the hard shaft standing between them. It sprang toward her and she felt Miles’s heartbeat stop. Then it started again, racing faster than before as she lowered her eyes and
wrapped her fingers around his warm smoothness. “I never knew anything could feel like this,” she breathed.
“Neither did I,” Miles gulped back. Her hand, her eyes, on his member felt extraordinary. Each time she moved her fingers he felt pulses of intense sensation from the base of his feet to the tips of his ears. It was as if she were not touching him in one place, but everywhere at once, at his very core, arousing him, igniting him, spreading sparks through her fingertips. She was otherworldly, an enchantress. She was his. At least for tonight.
Her eyes rose to meet his and he kissed her with the full force of his desire, thrilled when she answered, kissing him hard, passionately, everywhere, responding unlike any woman had ever responded to him before. As they kissed she stroked her hand along his length, then rubbed her palm against his tip. Instinctively she found the sensitive place where it met in two round petals and ran her thumb over it.
Miles staggered at the sensation. “If you do not stop, I shall explode,” he whispered to her.
“I thought that was the intention,” she whispered back with a coy smile.
Something about her tone brought Miles’s reason flooding back. What the hell was he doing? Summoning all the self control he possessed, he stilled her hand with his own and looked at her. “Clio, you know I cannot marry you.”
“Do you want to stop, Miles?”
Miles shook his head grimly. “No. But it is, it would be—”
“—Dishonorable of you to take my virginity,” Clio finished the sentence for him. She knew what he was saying, what he was trying to ask. “I understand. But you do not need to worry, my lord. Nothing you could do will dishonor me.” Then she smiled up at him, a smile more potent than any touch, and said, “Make love to me, Miles. Here. Now.”