I looked at Keen. She knew what would happen if I touched the water. My skin would burn, and everyone would know what I was. Either way, I was doomed.
“Now, princess,” Van Helsing hissed in my ear.
I took a deep breath and fought to keep the beast down. When the blud took me over, I was all brawn and no brains. And I needed an intelligent solution more than I needed a bloodbath.
“Let me go, and I’d be glad to touch the Kraken.”
He released me. I pulled my glove back up over my wrist and shook my arm, trying to get the feeling to return to my fingertips. Taking a step back, he gave me a slow, vicious smile.
I scanned the deck, barely containing my panic but ready to take a desperate chance. No one was watching us. I reached for the edge of the tank, grabbed it with both hands, and pushed it as hard as I could. The glass rocked for a moment, the water spilling away from us and splattering over the deck. Then, in one fluid movement, I yanked the glass back toward us as hard as I could and leaped away. The tank fell in slow motion, the water sloshing in a graceful, slopping wave. Van Helsing was but a simple human, of course—he hadn’t moved quickly enough and fell with the tank.
I was already halfway across the deck. I turned to watch as the tank shattered over the man’s fallen form, raining broken shards of glass, bits of coral, and flapping fish all over the wood of the deck. Crabs skittered drunkenly over the boards, their claws snapping. Panic broke out, the women shrieking and the men running about drunkenly.
I was down the steps before the salt water could touch the hem of my dress.
18
I huddled in the closet, waiting for a flood of seawater or an angry Miss May to claim me. When the door banged open, I cringed only a little. The blud in my wine had sharpened my senses. I could tell by the smell that it was Casper, and he was alone.
“Ahna, where are you?”
I unfolded myself and crept out of the closet. “Are they coming for me?”
“No. Everyone’s too busy cleaning up. No one saw what happened. Including me.” He watched me, waiting for answers.
“He knew me.” I checked the floor for seawater before slipping off my boots and gloves and curling up on the bed, my arms wrapped around my knees. “He knew what I was. Who I was. He called me Ahnastasia, and he tried to make me touch the water. So I pushed it over on him.”
He nodded. “That worked out well, then.”
I gaped at him, heart racing. “Well?” He shrugged. “It’s a disaster. Van Helsing wants me dead! He tried to force me to touch salt water. He hunts my people. He’s a monster.”
“Was a monster,” Casper said softly, crossing the room to sit on the foot of the bed.
“Surely the tank didn’t kill him,” I said, confused.
“Almost. Five hundred gallons of water and a ton of glass is a lot for one Pinky. But that didn’t kill him. I did.”
His gloved fingers unfurled to reveal the jagged stem from the goblet he’d broken earlier. Droplets of blood clung to it, and I unconsciously licked my lips. Casper placed it gently on the bedside table, just out of my reach.
“I’ve never killed anyone before. And he probably would have died on his own before the night was over. But he was trying to say your name. To say ‘Ahnastasia.’ ”
Hearing my name on his lips drew my attention away from the bloody glass and back to his face. He seemed different to me somehow.
We stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment.
“How do you feel?” he finally asked.
I took inventory and rubbed the place on my arm where Van Helsing had held me. “I feel shaken. A little bruised. You?”
“I need a drink.” He reached for the bottle on the bedside table, knocking the goblet stem to the ground with a growl. Sitting back, he uncorked it and took a long swig as his eyes captured mine. I held out a hand for the bottle.
“Are you sure you want more?” he asked. “It had a strange effect on you earlier.”
“It made me feel relaxed. I just had a big scare. I could use some relaxation.”
He handed it over, his fingers reluctant to leave the bottle until I tugged. “Have you never had bludwine before?”
I took several swallows and passed the bottle back. “Cora gave me a sip. And I’ve had bloodwine, with human blood. But not this.”
“It seemed a little like you were drunk, the way you were behaving on deck.”
“Then let’s get drunk.” I could already feel the warm, pleasant uncoiling in the pit of my stomach. I licked my lips and smiled, slow and wide. The world grew fuzzy around the edges. For someone as tightly in control as I normally was, it was a delicious sort of release. Before he could stop me, I snagged the bottle back and had another sip.
“Slow down, there, speed demon.” He tried to take the bottle back. But the taste was growing on me. I craved it. It was richer than the richest blood I’d ever had. If normal blood was a tributary, this was the river.
“I’m not a daimon, silly,” I said with a giggle.
I covered my mouth to burp, and he snagged the bottle, tipped it back, and drained it.
“That was mine!” I said.
“You’re a hungry little thing.” His voice slurred, just a little.
“Always.”
The slow smile on his face matched mine as he pushed back to sit against the bed’s headboard, just a few feet away from me. He crossed his boots on the velvet coverlet and leaned back contentedly.
“You’re right,” he said, eyes on the ceiling. “This is much better. I’ve never drunk so much at once. I’m going to feel like hell in the morning. Prolly go mad. But I just killed a guy, so I guess I deserve a little oblivion.”
I rolled my head over to look at him, and the room spun with me. I could barely move, but I managed to maneuver onto my side, smoothing his long hair out of my way. Up close, it was the color of burnished maple and smelled impossibly of fir trees.
“You’ve never killed anyone before?” I absentmindedly twirled a lock of his hair around my finger.
“ ’Course not.” He rolled over likewise to face me. I felt his knees graze mine but was too melty and fuzzy to react. Our eyes met with a sizzle, and part of me woke up a little bit, just enough to appreciate the fine blue of his irises, the knowing curve of his lips.
“Where I come from, killing is a serious crime. I’ve punched a few guys, but I’ve never drawn blood.” He paused to move a sand-colored curl that had fallen over my cheek. His fingers barely grazed my skin, but I felt his touch like trails of fire. It took everything I had not to purr under his fingers like the cat, yearning shamelessly toward his touch. Instead, I shook my head just the tiniest bit, to see if another curl would oblige.
It did. He moved that one, too, this time more slowly. I grinned at him, and he echoed it, complete with dimples. Somewhere inside me, the beast stirred. But instead of rising in a fury, hissing and spitting and fighting from the dark depths, it seemed to curl and stretch and unfurl, as Tommy Pain did when he found a nice sunbeam.
For the first time in my life, my beast didn’t want blood.
“You good, sugarplum?” Casper drew a finger down my cheek.
“Do we have more wine?” I asked, trying to cover my confusion.
“One more bottle.” He rolled over to rummage in his bag. “That’s all I have to hold me until Minks. But you can have another sip if you need it. Considering the current circumstances.”
He popped out the cork and handed me the full bottle. I took a moment to sniff it, drawing in the strange combination of aged fruit and blud. I took a deep whiff, trying to detect what might have gone into the brew, whether it held the blud of one Bludman or many. I wanted to know how he had found it, how much it cost, whether the blud had been obtained by fair trade or stolen. But I wanted the oblivion more. I wanted the lack of control, a liquor I’d never before tasted.
Knowing that it was precious to him, still I drank deeply, wanted to drink it forever. But he gently
took it from me, recorked it, and stowed it back in his bag. I could feel his eyes on my face, his gaze sharper than usual but also warm. Was he actually looking at me as if I was the prey?
“What is it I see in your eyes?” I murmured.
“Long enough have I dreamed contemptible dreams,” he replied softly, as if reciting something. “You are a dazzle of light, darlin’.”
Faster than I could follow, his hand cupped my jaw as his thumb stroked under my lip. I shut my eyes and let the effects of the bludwine wash over me in a haze of red velvet and sweetness. When I opened them again, he was biting his lip, and I saw that his teeth were sharper than I had thought, almost fangs like mine.
“Was that a song?” I asked, but he shook his head.
“Ahna,” he said, his voice husky and rough.
“Yes?” Lips parted, I held my breath.
His face angled toward me, and I closed my eyes, waiting. The kiss never came.
“Ahna. I should probably go. I’ve never had this much bludwine, and I can’t . . . I can’t control it. It’s like there’s some mad beast inside me, trying to take over. I should lock myself in the library and sleep it off.”
“No.” I leaned forward to put my hand on his sleeve. “I mean, you don’t have to go. I don’t mind.”
“I feel like I’m half panther, half drunk.” He looked down. His fingers idly stroked my own where they lay on his blood-spattered shirt, making me shiver. “I’m not fit for company.”
“How do you think I feel?” I said softly.
He looked up from our hands, gazing into my eyes as if searching for something there. “I don’t know how you feel,” he said. “You never speak of your feelings.”
“I feel the same as you. Muddled and drunk and not sure whether or not to let the beast out. It’s not a bad thing.”
“You have a beast?”
I snorted. “You’ve met my beast. She tried to kill you once. I think you laughed at her before you sliced her open. Tasted her.”
“Mm. I remember.” He reached out to touch my wrist. A thin pink scar crossed the white skin, and he lifted my arm to kiss it. “She tasted good. But I’ll make amends.”
When his lips touched my skin, I nearly melted. But not like ice. No, like mercury, like metal sizzling, as if my veins were filled with molten fire. I gasped and closed my eyes, and I felt him smile against my skin, kissing his way up my arm, every touch burned into memory with a hot iron.
“I can smell your blud now,” he said, his voice dark. “Right here, so close to the skin, beating like a tiny bird thrashing against a cage.”
His tongue shot out, and a little thrill rippled through me. It was a struggle to hold still, to keep the beast from attacking him in a thousand different ways that I myself didn’t understand. For just a split second, his teeth scraped against the tender skin there, and I felt a thrum of fear and indignation and furious demand, but then his kisses turned harmless again and moved down to my hand, and I relaxed.
He kissed my palm and each finger, then released me. For a moment, my hand hovered in midair, my eyes closed. Then I went boneless and let my hand drop to the bed, the little thrills still running up and down, echoes of his touch. I opened my eyes and licked my lips. My breath was coming fast, the same feeling I would get on a hunt, watching the prey, waiting for the right moment to pounce.
But I wasn’t the hunter this time. My eyes met his, and I saw his beast there, roiling beneath the surface, dark and hungry. I could see the tension in his broad shoulders, his hands curling and uncurling against the blanket as if testing claws.
“Come on, beast,” I whispered.
His lips crashed against mine, his body driving me back into the soft pillows with a passion just one notch above fury.
I had never imagined that a kiss could be like that, like a live thing, like lightning. The hasty, awkward fumbling of the salesman on the tank and the press of the pirate, even that earlier searing brand from Casper himself, were as different from this as a drop of rain was from a hurricane. His mouth moved against mine, hungry and seeking and offering no quarter, no escape. As he parted my lips with his tongue, I tangled my hands in his hair, pinning him to me and daring him to leave me wanting.
In response, he pressed his body against mine, cupping my jaw and settling over me possessively. It was delicious, the strength and purpose in him, the tension in his muscles against the thick velvet of my dress. Barely knowing what I was doing, I growled softly into his kiss and hooked a leg over one of his boots. Heedless of all my training as a predator and a princess, I wanted him right where he was, and damn the rest.
He pulled away to chuckle against my mouth, and I nipped his lip, tasting just the tiniest hint of blood. He growled as I sucked his lip and moaned, trying to draw in more of the marvelous, wild taste of him. No wonder I’d tried to kill him when I’d first woken up. Under that odd, musky odor, he was just a step below the bludwine. Casper was intoxicating.
He pulled back, eyes afire. Trailing a finger down my face, he ran his thumb between my lips. Remembering the sensual dance of his fingers over the harpsichord’s keys, I wrapped my mouth around his thumb and sucked until he pulled it out with a tortured groan.
“No more blood,” he said, his voice as ragged as I’d ever heard.
“Tit for tat,” I said with a brazen smile. Now that I’d had a taste of him, I wanted more.
“Is that how it works? You try to kill me, so I cut you; I make amends and you kiss me until I bleed?”
“I could do without the first two parts,” I purred.
“Could you, now?”
I just smiled, my eyes focused on his lip and the single bead of blood there. I shifted under him a little, noticing his weight now that we weren’t kissing, wanting more kisses. When I tried to move my leg, he caught it against his side. “Oh, no you don’t,” he muttered, stopping my wiggling by pressing up against me in a way that made me gasp and then settling his lips over my open mouth.
My heart was thumping against my corset, and I lost myself in the kiss. I didn’t know where I ended and he began, whose tongue was whose, how much of the beast took me over. I wrapped my other leg around him, and he pressed against me with the rhythm of a spring river crashing against rocks. I found myself moving with him, my hands fumbling with his cravat.
He caught my throat in one hand, and I hissed on principle. He laughed and kissed his way down my neck, making me squirm and pant. He paused between kisses, and the hunger when his hot mouth wasn’t on my skin was interminable. When his teeth grazed my jaw, I leaned my head farther back. My beast didn’t care if my throat was ripped out, so long as his hands stayed on me.
I was lost in sensation, feeling things I’d never felt, never considered. The fire arcing down my spine, settling in my belly like lava, trickling deeper to a need I’d never known, a deep ache between my legs worse than any hunger for blood. I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but I’d never wanted anything so badly. When he reached down to unlace the front of my dress, I caught his ear in my teeth and whispered, “Don’t stop.”
“I don’t plan to.” He unpicked the ribbons with nimble fingers. I surged toward him, needing his hands on my skin, responding to his body on instinct.
He jerked my dress open and found the corset instead.
“Fucking corsets!” he growled.
I went for the first hook and eye, to show him how it was done. Instead, he caught my hands and pinned them over my head, running his tongue down my neck and over the tops of my breasts, crushed as they were against the corset. I moaned and bucked, and he ran one hand down my side and over my hip, to the place where my dress and petticoats puddled in velvet and lace. As his hand plunged into the mess of fabric, hunting for my skin, he caught my mouth again in a kiss barely less fierce and somehow more intimate for its control.
I pressed myself against him, ablaze inside as his hand stroked closer and closer to the place where I knew I truly wanted him. I kissed him as if he was air, as
if there was nothing but him and me and blood and blud and tongues and claiming.
He finally stroked me in a place I hadn’t dared to think about, a single finger slicked between my thighs, and I cried out in amazement and passion and fierce joy.
And that’s when I heard the door open and Keen howl, “Goddammit!”
19
Her boots clomped away down the hall as I sat up, trying to put my skirts to rights, my face flushed to have been seen in such a state. Was it so wrong, what we had done? Did Casper hate me now that Keen had seen? I pulled up my knees, tucking my skirts tightly under my legs. I was looking down, but I could hear Casper putting himself to rights, too.
“This isn’t over,” he said, his voice half growl and half whisper.
When I didn’t look up, he put a gentle hand under my chin and forced me to meet his gaze.
“Don’t blush,” he said, as serious as I’d ever seen him. “Don’t you dare be ashamed.”
“Are you telling me what to do?” I said, trying to muster my usual arrogance. The quiver in my lip betrayed me.
“Yeah, maybe I am.” He sat down on the bed beside me.
Everything was hazy, like the dregs of a dream. The bludwine, what had passed between us—it was like waking up suddenly, cold and confused in harsh daylight, not sure what was real. I fidgeted, not knowing what to do with my hands. A single, shiny chestnut hair was caught in one of my fingernails. I picked it out and watched it fall to the ground.
“Aren’t you going after her?” I finally asked.
He smiled sadly. “She doesn’t want to be chased. She needs to sulk alone. She’ll come back when she’s ready. Believe me—it’s happened plenty of times before.”
“It’s—I mean—oh,” I said, feeling more silly and pathetic than ever.
Of course, I was just one in a long line of girls he’d seduced. No wonder Keen was always angry at me. She seemed to think of Casper as a father; she must have felt about his women the same way I felt about my mother’s string of disposable lovers. Disgusted and hateful.