Silken Rapture (Princes of the Underground 2)

“I’m not mad. Isi is coming to London.” He quickly relayed the details of Isi’s flight. “Will you take him into Sanctuary?”

“Of course, but tell me what’s happening, Saint,” Blaise roared, suddenly sick of his brother’s uncooperativeness. “First, you contact me and predict the presence of that powerful crystal. Next, you speak as if you already knew Isabel would be there in that tunnel.” He sensed Isabel stirring next to him, but he was too irritated to pause. “Now you’re telling me that an Iniskium warrior, bound to the central regions of the United States of America, is going to be flying into London! What impossibilities will you tell me next?”

“That is all,” Saint snapped, seeming just as irritated as Blaise. He shifted restlessly in his chair, as if he desired action and was being forced to sit still.

“Kavya is keeping you from talking, isn’t he?” Blaise demanded, referring to Saint’s Magian overlord.

Saint gave him a frustrated glance and looked away.

“I knew it. Damn that Magian. Is Usan behind your silence as well?”

Saint just shook his head, wearing a profound

expression of frustration.

Blaise released the caught air in his lungs. “Bloody hell,” he mumbled. “I see they have their spell on your throat and mind.”

“I’m sending you Isi. Take him in, Blaise. Trust me, and hear what he says,” Saint said in a gravelly voice. His unusual, slanted blue eyes seemed to send out a plea for understanding. A woman’s hand suddenly appeared on Saint’s shoulder, massaging him, but before Blaise could see who soothed his brother, the screen went blank.

He blinked. Who had the woman been? He had never known Saint to invite a female into his working den at Whitby. He had never seen or sensed anyone with him when they communicated in the past—

He rose out of his shock with a jolt when Isabel placed her hand on his shoulder, just as the woman had to Saint on the screen.

“Are you all right, Blaise?”

He looked up at her, caught off guard by the bizarre communication with Saint and now her stirring touch. He stood abruptly and moved before the fire, where he began to pace. When he noticed Isabel still stood where he’d left her, and the bewildered expression on her face, he tried to convey his unrest to her as best he could in words. He sighed in residual frustration several minutes later.

“My only consolation is that if Isi truly can travel outside the bounds of Saint’s territory, then Saint will have sent him to speak to me. Perhaps Isi will provide me with some of the secrets of why our world is changing…why that crystal appeared—”

“And why I was with it?” Isabel asked in a low, throaty voice.

He paused in his pacing, his mouth still open. Isabel had stepped nearer to him. He became hyperaware of the pulse at her throat.

“Perhaps,” he replied warily.

She took another step closer. He felt her gaze on his cheek like a touch. “You’re upset,” she said quietly.

He raised his eyebrows slightly in a “Who wouldn’t be upset?” gesture. She inhaled, as if for courage, and he couldn’t stop his gaze from flickering down over her shapely breasts.

“Aubrey told me yesterday that you tend to starve yourself at times, weaken yourself by not taking vitessence.”

He blinked as a shock jolted through him for the second time in minutes. Damn Aubrey. He’d been very specific with the Literati about how much they revealed to Isabel. He’d made it clear, for instance, that he didn’t want Isabel to understand their shape-shifting nature, recollecting all too well how repulsed Elysse was by his wolf-self. It had been a different century, and legends and fears associated with the werewolf had clung heavily in the Italian countryside where Elysse had grown up.

He hadn’t specifically told Aubrey not to tell Isabel about his moments of despair, but he’d thought such a personal thing would remain an obvious secret between friends.

“You have been spending a great deal of time with me every day for the past week,” Isabel continued, her lovely voice vibrating with emotion. “Do you never feel the desire, the urge to take my blood? It might help to calm you right now, give you strength…”

His mouth went dry as a bone. He stared at her mutely. He felt cornered, defeated by a foe against whom he had no training. How could she ask him such a question? He hungered for her essence each and every second of his existence.

He quenched himself at night on her. Or he tried to, anyway. It never worked. He always wanted more. He knew he was foul for doing it, but it was ridiculous to think he could do otherwise. He was soulless…an animal. Human beings called him a vampire. He could not prevent himself.

He’d stopped trying.

But these afternoons with Isabel were part of her every day, conscious existence. She was aware when he took her at night, as well, but he’d always end their impassioned joining by hiding those memories deep within her unconscious. It was the only thing he could do to save her from her anguish—to protect himself from the eventual certainty of her disgust and horror. He must steal her memories of his savage, unquenchable need for her. He must make her forget how much she wanted him, in turn, or she would become ashamed…afraid. He couldn’t bear that possibility.

He knew he was a fool for allowing himself to spend time with her during these stolen afternoons. One day, he would lose control and take her blood here in his study as they talked and exchanged glances and laughed. If it weren’t for his thorough possession of her every night, he would have done so already.

“Aubrey needs to learn to keep his mouth shut,” he told her shortly before he set his half-drained wineglass on the mantel.