“
Avia aura. Avia solari. Avia noctus.
”
The words made no sense. Not Latin or English or any other language Althea recognized.
As he spoke, he touched each side of the coffin, walking slowly around it. “
Aura se selen.
Aura se nordum.
”
Father lifted a hemlock branch, whittled to a sharp point, and traced the shape of a cross from the foot of the coffin to the head and side to side.
“
Bey ara nonum.
”
He traced a circle over the pattern of herbs.
Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 41
“
Ecta enta aura. Ecta enta decum.
”
Father lifted his head. “Open the coffin.”
Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 42
“His eyes are open.” A woman leaned over his coffin. A woman who smelled of lavender and spring flowers, of fresh-baked bread and country air. Rich and throaty and soft, her voice was pure femininity and his body, even though inert, responded. His instant erection was insistent, demanding, but he was damnably incapable of movement.
“Yes, but he can’t see,” an elderly male voice answered.
Not true. He could. Not well—his eyesight was still weak—but enough to detect soft, pretty red lips. Red hair, too. A dark and beautiful color like rich, intoxicating wine. Tendrils dangled over her alabaster skin. Golden light glinted over her eyes, shielding them. She wore something over them. She pursed her tempting lips to blow one curl away.
Althea. He knew her name from his dreams. A lovely name for a lovely wanton.
Bastien de Wynter tried to follow Althea, his savior, with his gaze as she moved but he couldn’t. Warmth began to prickle through his long unused limbs. A surge of triumph rushed through him. Damn, he’d wiggled a toe.
He smelled daylight. As a nocturnal creature he knew the difference between night and day in the way the air tasted on his tongue, in the way it filled his nostrils, his lungs.
Damnation, was he going to be toasted by daylight after a decade of hell?
He listened intently for an answering heartbeat. A slow, almost silent one to match his own.
Nothing.
So where was Yannick? Still buried somewhere in England?
How in hell, then, had Althea awoken him?
She returned and leaned over him. Once more his long-denied senses gorged on the sweet aromas of fresh bread, rushing blood, feminine sweat, lavender, and wildflowers. Before he’d been entombed, he’d never let a night go by without burying his face—and his teeth—into a woman’s perfumed skin.
Yes, sweeting, lean a little closer.
In his dreams, she bewitched him. Wrapped her sweet innocence around his heart and drove him mad with need and lust. For ten years he’d been unable to move but his mind had been alert and aware every night. Goddamned agony…
He ached to touch her now, but he could not move more than his toes, his fingertips, the muscles of his face. His lips twitched. He blinked.
Had she seen?
No, she had her attention fixed on her hands and the object she held there. Those plump Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 43
little breasts amply filled her tight-fitting bodice. With fetching sweetness, they rose and fell beneath the beige muslin.
Zayan had buried him naked. He saw her gaze flit down his body. Felt it pause at his crotch. On his cock, which was not immobilized.
Her eyes widened behind the lenses of her spectacles.
Touch me, darling, please
. He wanted some of that lush spring scent on his flesh. Needed her touch on his long-unsatisfied prick. But she looked up.
Cool metal touched his skin at the top of his chest, below the hollow at the base of his throat.
His skin began to numb. What in hell was she doing?
Her fingers slid up his throat.
Vulnerable. He had never felt so damned vulnerable.
If he were to die, he wished he could have buried himself in her. Wished to heaven he could have fucked her. In his dreams, she’d given him the promise of dark erotic depths in her soul.
He wanted the chance to unlock them.
Numbness spread over Bastien but fire flamed where her fingers touched him. Her gaze locked with his as she brushed back his hair and exposed his neck.
Althea’s fingers shook as she flicked Bastien’s long hair back from his muscled neck. In the lamplight, the thick, silky strands glowed as golden as the collar she’d laid at the base of his throat.
A blush beat in her cheeks, in rhythm with her heartbeat. A heartbeat that hammered as loud as a war drum. That thundered like bolting horses.
Shivers of desire raced down her spine at the touch of her gloved fingers to his cool, perfect skin.
Only an innocent woman must place the collar around a male vampire’s neck. Which made capturing a female vampire even more difficult, as finding a virgin male—
“Hurry up, lass.”
“Jesus, he’s as hard as a bloody iron bar.” Mick O’Leary’s coarse comment rang in her ears.
In front of Father, O’Leary, and the workmen, she struggled not to look down at Bastien’s erection. But the image remained from moments ago, seared in her mind.
Of course it looked just as it did in her dreams. Not an exact match for Yannick’s, just as in her dream. Erect, it curved like a bow, the heavy head hanging against his rippled abdomen. It looked almost weaponlike—dangerous and rampant and lusty. His skin was pale, his cock paler still, but blushing pink at the straining head.
She mustn’t look.
Wetness gathered between her thighs. Her drawers soaked through, the lace trimmed slit became sticky.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Father drape a cloth over Bastien’s prominent erection.
Sparing her the shocking sight.
Yet last night she had run her clasped hand along the length of that cock and squeezed the head until Bastien had begged beside her ear. Until he’d cried out her name and—
Stop. Stop. Stop.
Yes, she’d dreamed of Bastien, but she’d been intimate for real with Yannick. Closing her Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 44
eyes, Althea quivered, remembering Yannick’s tongue circling her…her most sensitive place.
His tongue filling her bottom. Plunging. His mouth on hers, on her breasts. The way he’d looked when he smiled up from between her thighs.
Stop!
Throat tight, she leaned right down and pushed the collar into place, beneath Bastien’s Adam’s apple. It fit so tightly she couldn’t make the clasp meet. She must bring the two ends together but they fell short.
She pulled tighter.
Had his eyes moved?
Her breasts brushed his chest as she bent as close as she could. As she balanced on tiptoes to lean over more, her tingling nipples pushed against her snug bodice as though straining to reach him. She bit back a moan just in time.
“What’s wrong, lass?” asked Father.
The ancient collar, the only one—or rather one of the only two—in the world, was too small.
But she would be damned if she would admit in front of Mick O’Leary that she couldn’t even do such a simple task.
Or would the collar not close because she was no longer innocent? Her maidenhead was still intact, but she hardly felt innocent now.
It unnerved to have his eyes open and watching, sightless though they might be. Lifting one hand from the collar, Althea stroked her fingertips over his eyelids and closed them. The way one did with the dead.
But he wasn’t dead and her body knew it. She throbbed now, between her legs. She ached to bend down and take his mouth with hers in one of the delicious, wide-open, hungry, devouring kisses from her dreams.
Shame burned through her.
How could she want such a thing with him after what she’d done with Yannick? Yannick might come to her tonight—
But, heaven help her, she flamed with need and desire now.
Trembling, she tugged hard on the collar’s ends. Warm now in her hands, the metal stretched as if by magic. The collar snapped into place. The jagged ends joined with a click and a surge of power that jarred her wrists and racked her shoulders.
She had to close her eyes again because looking at Bastien’s beautiful face made her fear she might kiss him. He was a handsome prince captured by a magic spell and she was about to awaken him.
He truly was handsome, she mused. Long golden hair swirled to his shoulders. His brows matched, golden too, straight but slanted upward at their ends. Unlike Yannick, his lashes were fair. Thick with a distinct curl, they lay along sculpted cheeks. A full mouth, softly curved.
Would it taste of warmth and man and sin as it did in her dreams?
What was she becoming?
A moral woman couldn’t want two men. A good woman mustn’t love more than one. She couldn’t—
couldn’t
—let herself feel this desire for Sebastien de Wynter.
“Good job, lass,” came Father’s cheerful voice by her ear. Althea’s heart jolted at his Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 45
praising tone. At the word
good
. Guiltily, she stepped back without a word and wrapped her arms around her chest as Father and the two workmen drew a shroud over Bastien’s naked body.
“Now, we’d best take this one back,” Father instructed, “and find the other.”
“You can’t capture the earl, Father.” Althea glared as Father knelt before Yannick’s door and slid a thin metal pick into the keyhole.
“Course I can, pet. And I need both twins to slay Zayan.”
“The earl saved your life.” She tried to speak calmly, emotionlessly. She tried to hide the thunder of her heart.
“He’s a vampire.” Father wiggled the pick. “Blast this thing. Never works.”
Was that a creak? Althea spun on her heel. Expecting a maid on the stairs, or another guest, she hissed, “Stop. Stand up.”
He did and linked his arm in hers to make it appear they were merely strolling down the hall to their rooms. Several anguished heartbeats passed.
“No one there, love. You’re jumping at shadows.”
She held out her hand. “Let me try the pick, then. Your fingers—”
“Nothing wrong with my fingers.”
“I can see how swollen they are, Father. Please let me try.”
Father refused to admit that he suffered with rheumatic hands and legs, but he surrendered the tool. Althea rolled the knurled handle between her fingers. She slid her spectacles back up her nose as she shifted her skirts and knelt at the door. Another skill she must perfect. “All in the feel,” Father had said. She wriggled the tip forward and back, up and down, testing resistance.
At the satisfying click, she grinned. Success. Followed by a jolt of conscience. Was she truly going to snap the second ancient controlling collar on Yannick?
He knew what she was. He’d come to her bed knowing what she was.
I am a vampire and
you are a hunter of vampires.
She pushed open the door, slow and quietly. “I believe we can trust the earl, Father.”
“I’ve never trusted a vampire, Althea.” Censure snapped in his tone. “And you’ve no cause to start.”
But she did.
Just as she stepped toward the threshold, Father grabbed her arm. “I’ll go first, love.”
Which gave her another moment to struggle with guilt and confusion. Yannick was a vampire. No doubt lying in his coffin, arms folded neatly over his chest. She must remember that first and foremost he was a vampire and she a slayer.
“Bloody hell, I don’t think he’s here.”
Ashamed at the relief bubbling through her like champagne, Althea stepped in. The room given to Yannick was not the inn’s best, but it was much larger than hers, though the big bed and bulky furniture made it just as cramped. No coffin could be seen, and it could hardly be hidden.
The bed was untouched. Father even checked beneath the bed, lifting the worn coverings as he Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 46
dipped a knee, and groaned. She jumped forward to do it instead, but stopped. It was obvious nothing was beneath the bed but dust.
Oh, thank heavens. For a while longer, she didn’t have to choose between the man she desired and the career she was determined to have.
“Blast.” Father sank down on to the edge of the bed. “I’ve tried to coax, bribe, or trick his whereabouts out of the servants. Thought he might try the obvious. Where better to hide than the room in which he’s supposed to be?”
He tapped his walking stick on the plank floor. “So I wonder where his lordship’s hidden his coffin?”
Sunlight reflected from his spectacles as he gazed at her. Althea shook her head. “I’ve no idea. The stables, possibly?”
“I expect he’s using a box and not a coffin, since I do believe his servants have no clue as to what he truly is. Though no one seems to have seen a box large enough to fit a body, and he’s not a small man.”
Oh, no, he definitely wasn’t small.
“What about the churchyard?” He wouldn’t steal a coffin, would he? The thought, a brutal reminder of what he was, made her shudder.
“Clever idea, lass. We’ll try that.”
From her window, Althea spotted the procession of lanterns as O’Leary, Father, and the workmen fanned out across the stretch of meadow.
She pushed up the sash, letting in the scent of rain and mud. Rain had swept in on the heels of the sunset. A torrent at first, now a drizzling mist, it was enough to soak her hair, face, and hands as she leaned out to watch. The lanterns dipped out of sight in a small valley, then flickered as the men passed between dark trees.
She dropped back into her room, brushing at the droplets on her hair. Moistened by the rain, her nightrail clung to her breasts, almost transparent over her hard nipples. Her bed was turned down, inviting her to crawl in and grow warm again. And beneath the bedcovers, the second controlling collar waited.