of his skin, of his arousal, steadied her in the sea of his torment. He placed his face in the nook between her neck and shoulder, giving her the impression he hid himself in shame.
“Shhh,” she crooned. She placed one hand on the back of his head, shivers racking her at the exquisite feeling of his hair sliding between her fingers. She placed her other palm on the smooth skin that gloved the dense muscle of a buttock. She moved beneath him, sliding her pussy along the shaft of his cock, reminding him there was no room between them for shame.
His growl near her ear sent another rush of convulsions through her body. He flexed his hips, fucking her with small, electric strokes, grinding down on her sex until the tiny shivers that shook her mounted to a full-fledged orgasm. She tightened around him as she came. She heard his low, rough groan near her ear.
When she came back to herself, he was fucking her in earnest again. He took her breath, his possession was so primal. His weight crushed her, but she wanted it…loved it. They lay heart to throbbing heart, their bellies flush, his head next to hers, his breath hot on her throat. She filled her palm with the pounding muscle of an ass cheek, urging him on, begging him without words to take his fill.
She stretched her throat.
“I am yours to take,” she gasped as he drove into her.
She cried out at the feeling of his teeth piercing her. Their bodies both went rigid. His cock swelled in her and jerked. Pain spiked through waves of pleasure. She stared up at the ceiling, blinded by the feeling of him coming deep inside her while his lips moved against her skin as he took her blood. His shudders became hers as she joined him in a mindless moment of communal bliss.
His muscles went lax and he collapsed. The air in her lungs whooshed out of her. He mumbled something and tried to raise himself, but she pushed down gently on his head.
“Don’t move,” she whispered. “You just took me by surprise, that’s all. I love your weight on me.”
His grunt sounded doubtful, but he seemed too exhausted to argue with her. He pressed her to the thick carpet and soft silk. She scraped her nails against his scalp and caressed his back, feeling him shiver in her arms.
“I don’t know how these things work, exactly, in your world,” she murmured. “I know I’m only a mortal woman, but that doesn’t make my experience any less valid. I won’t lie about it. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but I have fallen in love with you, Blaise.” His ragged breathing ceased for a moment, but then resumed as she stroked him, trying to ease the unrest her words had wrought.
She fell asleep to the lulling sensation of his breath evening against her neck.
He lifted his head and watched her as she slept. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that, motionless, studying every curve, every plane, every nuance of her face. They were still locked together. He felt her heart beating steadily along the shaft of his embedded cock. His own heart followed her lead, until they gently pulsed together as one.
Her lips moved as she murmured something in her sleep. Her mouth curved into a sleepy smile. He lowered his head and kissed her lips fleetingly, wondering at the miracle of her.
She had touched him with her knowing hands…and she smiled.
She’d said she loved him. Women had said it frequently to him over the centuries, usually in the aftermath of pleasure. He understood his nature gave him this power over humans, the ability to inspire obsessive love. It had never really meant anything to him.
He wanted it to mean something with Isabel. She was different, wasn’t she? Was it even possible, that he could be loved by a miracle such as her?
He placed his mouth on the small wounds on her neck, closing his eyes in quiet rapture as he licked her, tasting her singular flavor before his essence healed her. The wound closed beneath his laving tongue.
He carefully withdrew from the tight embrace of her body, grimacing at the lack of her warmth. He turned her in his arms. She nestled against him, her cheek against his chest.
He watched over her until his inner clock told him it was dawn. As the minutes and hours passed, something began to grip at his heart like cold fingers. The mindless, rapturous moments of their lovemaking seemed to grow more and more distant, more ephemeral, even as he tried to keep them fixed and vibrant in his memory. It was like trying to hold on tight to a dream. The fragments melted through his grasping hands. Was he experiencing some hint of the misery he subjected Isabel to, night after night when he made her forget?
Blaise had no experience with faith…with believing in the impossible.
“Isabel,” he mouthed.
She moved restlessly in his arms as if she’d heard an apology he couldn’t bring himself to speak aloud. His hand hovered over her temple for suspended seconds before he touched her. He closed his eyes tightly, willing her to forget.
When he’d swept her mind clean of what had occurred between them that night, and sent her into a profound level of sleep, he released her. He wiped his cheeks as he sat up and stared at his fingers in numb bewilderment. They were wet with tears stained pink with blood. It had happened to him once before, that he’d shed tears mixed with the blood of his victim.
He rose and lifted Isabel’s sleeping form off the ivory silk.
Chapter Thirteen
Time stretched for Isabel, hazy and full and sweet.
She languished on the soft sofa in her bedroom suite, a copy of Antony and Cleopatra dangling from her limp fingertips. Royal watched her from his post next to the crackling fire, his head tilted.
“What’s this?” Margaret’s voice penetrated her lassitude. “You haven’t eaten hardly a thing. How long is this going to continue, young lady?”
Isabel blinked her heavy eyelids and tried to sit up, but her limbs felt so heavy she fell back to the cushions.