35
“Casper—”
“Turn around.”
Something inside me thrilled to hear him say it, to hear him taking control, using his power. He was giving off heat and heaven only knows what else, and the beast inside me wanted to roll naked at his feet, belly up and arms stretched over head, begging for his mouth. I wanted to make myself open and pliant for him, let him take me over with the fury of a storm.
And I realized that he was right. No one would see the vast territories of flesh that stayed hidden under my heavy dress. We had at least two hours of privacy. Before I knew it, I had my back to him, my fingers digging into the top of the bench as he carefully but quickly undid the row of buttons down my back.
I turned my head and met the hungry fire of his eyes over my shoulder. He looked down at my mouth, his intention clear.
“You can’t muss my lipstick.”
“Open your mouth.”
His eyes held me, stealing my breath. Ever so slowly, I opened my mouth. With one hand on the smooth plane of my back just above my corset, he leaned closer. His tongue darted in to caress mine, sweet and wet and hot, and it was all I could do to stay still. Part of me wanted to attack him, to drive him back into the cushioned bench. But my beast knew who held the power, who was in charge. I squirmed in place, wishing to press against him, begging him to press against me. But instead of answering my unspoken plea, he said, “Take it off.”
I pushed the dress carefully down over my arms and slipped them one by one from under the long, heavy sleeves.
I stood, bent over awkwardly, and he sat back like a king and watched me step out of the dress, the fabric whispering as it slid to the carriage floor. I folded it reverently and draped it across the other bench. Before I could shift to a more attractive and comfortable position, his hands grasped the waist of my corset and dragged me to my knees. I gasped as he buried his mouth in the cleft between my breasts, his teeth scraping lightly as if he still wasn’t accustomed to their sharpness. He settled me between his knees, and I ran my hands up the hard planes of his thighs.
“You’re going to rumple your waistcoat,” I whispered breathily in his ear.
“Good,” he growled into my skin.
His tongue found my nipple with a searing heat, lapping hungrily under the edge of my corset. I moaned into his hair and ran my hands up the taut suede of his thighs. Careful not to muss my lipstick, I licked the edge of his ear, slow and breathy, until he shivered.
“That’s about enough out of you, princess.”
He moved faster than I had expected, catching my wrists and transferring them both into one hand. I caught my breath, feeling dainty and exposed and highly anticipating what he would do next, with me completely in his power. It was highly erotic, not being the most dangerous creature in the very small room. When he snatched a twisted silk tassel from the curtains, I smiled, slow and sweet, and tugged experimentally at my wrists. It was gratifying, the strength of his grip.
“Front or back?” he asked.
“Do with me what you will,” I whispered.
He held my captured wrists against my back and nibbled my neck as he tied them together with the rope and tested the knot. I could feel the tassels hanging lower, dusting my ankles where they peeked out from the long petticoats. I entwined my fingers and gave myself up to him completely.
He slipped off the bench and behind me, his knees just outside mine and his hips pressed urgently against me.
“Bend over,” he said in my ear, and I turned my face and set my cheek against the satin cushion of the bench. A little shiver ran over me, followed by his hands. He started at the nape of my neck, raising the hairs along my spine as he brushed down my shoulders, down the sides of my corset, down my hips, feeling the curves of me like a painter sketching. One finger slipped under the edge of my corset, tracing a line across my hips. I caught my breath as he tugged down my petticoats, just enough to run his tongue along the strip of revealed skin and make me moan. With another savage tug, the layers of ruffles fell to the ground around my knees, and his breeches pressed up against the skin of my rump. Hot and wanting and wet, I pressed back, ready for more.
I had just started to rub against him when he pulled away.
“What—?” I started.
He smacked my bottom lightly, making me gasp. “Hush. I’ve been told not to ruin my costume.”
Buttons hurriedly whispered through fabric, and then he pressed against me, skin to skin. With my hands bound and my face against the cushion, I had never been so vulnerable in my entire life, at least not while I was awake and outside the suitcase. I was very well aware that he could do anything to me, hurt me in a thousand ways only a Bludman could devise, or take me in a hundred ways that a man could imagine. It only made me want him all the more, and I bit my lip to hold in a whimper.
Hot and hard, he pressed against the cleft of me, testing, rubbing. I wiggled shamelessly, aching for more, and he pulled away and slapped my rump again, a little harder this time, making me squeal.
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to rule you?”
“Tell me,” I whispered.
“Since the beginning. Since I tasted your blud. It was the sweetest thing I’ve ever known.”
“You hid it well.” He smacked me again, the sting heating my skin and making me bite my painted lip. My entire body was alive, alert, thrilling, tingling. I arched my spine, reaching for him, opening for him.
“You didn’t truly see me until now, Ahnastasia. I was just prey before. But I’m beginning to understand. The need to dominate. I never did before, but now . . .”
“Now you have teeth.”
He leaned over my back, his lips warm against my ear. “You may be a princess, but you belong to me.”
My insides quivered, a flare of heat below where a finger dipped in to tease me. I could barely breathe. I was helpless against my body, against my senses, against the knowledge that the mad human had become an alpha Bludman commanding physical strength and power that I couldn’t possess. My beast purred for him, longed to touch him, stroke him, hold him close. I flexed my hands and tested the rope, but it was tied tightly. Seeing me struggle, he chuckled low, pressed his finger lazily in and out as I strained to meet him.
“You’re trapped, darlin’. I can do any damn thing I want to you.”
His teeth dragged across the nape of my neck, and I shivered. He bit down just a little, just enough to make me pant and gnash my teeth, too.
His lips brushing my spine, he muttered, “I could snap your neck if I wanted to. I could rip you to pretty ribbons. You’re still the best thing I’ve ever tasted, you know.”
He pulled away, and I quivered, waiting, knowing, until he dragged his tongue up my cleft, deep and slow, just to prove he could.
In response, I whimpered and struggled for more. He straightened and chuckled his mastery, and I backed up to press my rump more firmly against the hard ridge of him, nothing left of me but a beggar, a beast. I wanted it, so badly. And everything he’d said was true. No matter what happened at the ball, no matter what happened tomorrow, at that moment, we were nothing more than animals, and I was completely in his power, and it was exquisite.
He grabbed my hips, pulling me hard against him with a grunt. I shoved forward a little on the bench, but he pulled me back again. As the carriage rattled along the mostly smooth road, a gentle swaying friction moved between us, a subtle rumble that added to the tension. We were always moving. I panted, unquiet and yearning, knowing what a fine line I rode between the ferocity and hunger of the heart and flesh.
One hand caught my neck, my skin still wet from his teeth. I arched my back and spread my legs further, unembarrassed by my eagerness. He rubbed against me, teasing me, nudging me gently open, out and in just the littlest bit, holding back, holding me in place with the beginnings of claws on my nape. But he didn’t fully take me, not yet. I wanted so much more, and I whimpered and tried to toss my head.
 
; “What do you want, princess?” His voice was dark and heavy, commanding. He withdrew, and I ached for more.
“Do it,” I hissed.
“Tell me, Ahnastasia. Tell me what you want.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Take me now. Do it, Casper.”
He chuckled and nudged me again, just the tip pushing in, hot and sweet. “I didn’t expect you to give in so easily, darlin’. I wanted to torture you for a while, like you’ve been torturing me all along. I want to make you ache like your heart’s going to burst in your chest. I want to be the only thing in the goddamn world for you.”
“You are. It does. Oh, goddess, just claim what’s yours!” I thrashed and pulled against the ropes on my wrists, and he pulled back. “Casper!” I growled, and in answer, he grabbed my hips with both hands and plunged in, hard and sure.
I felt him so deep, sliding in and out with a furious pounding that matched my heart. There was something exquisite about my helplessness, about being the object, the lesser of the beasts. I was hot and slippery, and he struck some place deep inside that felt sweeter than blood, sweeter than anything else I’d ever known. I wanted to move with him, to grasp and grapple and growl, but all I could do was turn my cheek to the cushion and take what he gave me.
With every thrust, my breasts pressed into the bench, the velvet raking my hard nipples, making each breath a gasp. When Casper grasped my corset strings and pulled them tighter, I went dizzy for a moment, my eyes rolling up and stars dancing in my vision. I reeled from the pull, the push, his thrusting, the velvet, the wheels grinding below us. I felt like a bludmare running away with the reins pulled taut by a masterly rider.
I turned my head to the other side, and the glittering fall of my dress filled my vision. I was lightheaded, furious, hungry, dizzy, pulsing with sweetness inside, and building again to that same tumultuous crescendo we had found the last time. For a moment, my eyes saw beyond to a snow-covered hill glittering in the moonlight, and I imagined Casper by my side, taking me on the blood altar in the clearing, the most ancient and primal rite of my people and the way it was said the strongest Tsarinas were spawned. For the space of a few frantic heartbeats, I smelled victory, the sugar snow falling like stars, cold and sparkling against the velvet darkness, and then I was there, hot and wet and desperate, taken over with the sweetness, thrumming deep inside, crying out, pulsing in time with Casper’s ferocious thrusts as I shuddered beneath him.
His hand clutched my wrists where they lay limp, pressing them possessively and intimately into my back as he growled and bucked along with my release. When he finally exhaled and fell across me, I was breathing deep, heavy, and slow, my eyes glazed over as I tried to float back to earth. I felt sated and limp and tranquil. And he was damned heavy.
“Let me get that for you,” he said, and I sighed as he untied the knot and freed my hands.
I sat up on my knees, still reeling, and flexed the feeling back into my fingers. With a shy smile, he handed me a fine handkerchief that matched his coat, and I felt only a little guilty as I cleaned myself off and let it flutter out the carriage window. My necklace had bought it, after all.
“Do you need help with your dress?” I turned to look at him. He sat on the opposite bench, his pants back to rights. It was a little fascinating, how he was an entirely different creature from what he had been a few short moments ago. The tenderness and humor had returned to his eyes, the dimples back in his smile. He was still powerful and confident—that would never go away. But there was just something lazy and calm about a sated hunter. One can’t hold on to the ferocity forever. I slipped my petticoats on and settled back into the cushion to put my feet in his lap.
“I don’t care to put it on yet.” I stretched as far as the carriage would allow. “What’s the point? There’s time enough.”
He leaned back, one hand on my ankle. “I like the way you think, sugarplum.”
I grinned lazily and looked down, and that’s when I noticed that my white corset was covered all over in black smears. I found similar stains on my wrists and hips.
“What . . . have you done to me?”
He bit his lip and tried really hard not to laugh, and I felt my first rumble of anger.
“It was Verusha’s idea. She said my hands weren’t dark enough, that someone might notice. So she rubbed ink into them. And I guess, with the sweat, it . . . rubbed off.”
“Ink. I’m on the way to the Sugar Snow Ball covered in ink?”
He covered a snort of laughter, badly, in a cough. “Isn’t there some way to clean it off? I don’t have another handkerchief. Maybe some snow?”
I shook his hand off my foot and gave him a halfhearted kick. “Idiot. There’s no snow. The first snow comes tonight. That’s the whole point.” I spat on my finger and rubbed at the stains that might actually show, the ones on my wrists. “Ink on your hands. Ink that will rub off. Fools. This is too important to mess up. This is—”
He caught my wrist. I hissed and tried to yank it away, but his grip was stronger than I remembered. His voice was soft and deadly. “I may not have you tied up and whimpering, but that doesn’t mean I’m your subject, princess.”
I went still all over. I had to. Damn him.
I swallowed hard and snatched my hand away, but we both knew it was only because he let me. We glared at each other, the air still between us, the crunching of stones under the carriage wheels the only sound. I rubbed my wrist and narrowed my eyes at him.
“You’re turning into a damned fine Bludman,” I finally said.
He grinned again, ruining the image. “I’ve got a good teacher,” he said.
36
The next time I pulled back the carriage’s curtain, I was surprised to see that it was dark and we were nearly to our destination. It was odd, how it seemed as if we’d been riding together forever, but also as if we’d had only a few stolen minutes. The forest was the last step of the journey. We’d be there soon, provided nothing tragic happened. There was a carriage ahead of us and another behind, so at least we would arrive in a crowd. The less we stood out, the better. Which meant, I supposed, that I needed to put on my dress.
“It’s almost time.” I checked my wrists for more of his damnable ink and started hitching up my dress to step in. “Don’t you dare touch your coat. Do you know any magic?”
He wiggled his black-streaked hands. “Only with the piano and your body.”
I rolled my eyes as I stepped into my gown and gently pulled it over my arms. The long sleeves would cover most of his mess, thank heavens. I tried to think about what I remembered of the Sugar Snow Ball, of the accommodations made for the city guests. There would have to be toilets, of course, and someplace with mirrors and water. I also knew that there was a way for couples to disappear discreetly, so at least we would have excuses if our behavior was strange or conspiratorial. Still . . .
“We have to do something about your hands.” I wiggled in my dress, unable to reach the tiny buttons running up my spine. “And quickly.”
He grinned, a perfect merging of his old recklessness and his new self-possessed smugness. “I took a lesson from my old rival and stocked my waistcoat.” Barely brushing the fabric, he pulled a bit of cloth from the pocket of his vest, a pair of black kid gloves that I remembered from his room at the Seven Scars. “I hate the damn things, but at least they’re the right color.”
“Try to keep your hands hidden, then. A country rube in gloves is better than an abomination with dirty hands.”
He stilled, his eyes searing me. “I’m not an abomination. I’m a Bludman.”
I inclined my head. “Just so.”
He pulled on the gloves, and I turned my back to him. With a minimum of fumbling, he buttoned up my dress, ending with a searing kiss on the nape of my neck. And it was a good thing, too, as the carriage jolted to a stop, knocking us both over. Casper pulled on his peacock jacket as the bludmares outside screamed in greeting and challenge, their calls answered from nearby rivals. Peeking past
the curtains, I was met with the curious face of an unfamiliar girl just a few feet away, leaning out her own lamplit carriage window. With a gasp, she popped back behind her curtain. It had to be her first ball, and I smiled to myself, remembering how excited I had been finally to see what it was that made the adults’ eyes twinkle every year when the air began to turn cold and smell like excitement.
“Your mask,” Casper said, and I growled to myself for being so foolish. I hoped the girl was too young to be as obsessed with my family as the old Muscovy barons had been. I slipped the cool porcelain back over my face and adjusted the feathers above. My best strategy was not to take it off again until I needed my teeth for murder.
Before I could likewise remind Casper, he hissed. He reached beyond me, his arm brushing the heavy beading of my dress with the sound of rustling leaves as he held out his own peacock mask, broken into three pieces.
“You can’t yell at me,” he said with a rueful chuckle. “After all, you were on this bench, so it’s your fault, not mine.”
With a finger under his chin, I turned his head this way and that. “Do you look different now to yourself?” I asked. “Would someone remember your face?”
“I can’t tell. I stopped looking about a year ago. Every time I did, I saw a new person there whom I hated with various levels of regret.”
“And now? Do you hate yourself now?”
He shook my finger off, pretending to snap at it. “Nope. Feels good. Do I look different to you?”
“Always and never the same. I would know better if I’d been awake for the last four years.”
The pieces of ceramic dropped from his gloved hands, and my fingers roved to my own mask, feeling the impersonal smoothness. I had never been one to hide, and I almost envied him his sudden but unwelcome freedom. It was unheard of to arrive at the Sugar Snow Ball without a mask, even if some of the revelers favored dainty lace strips or modified eye patches. We would have to find something before he made a fool of himself or was refused entry.
“My lord, my lady! Will you descend?”