The Vampire Voss (Regency Draculia 1)

The back of his shoulder throbbed angrily, fighting with the passion and release that he must have. He closed his mind to it, fought it away, gulped and shifted and thought of Angelica.

Of his hands on her, his mouth and their skin…to skin. The long, sleek slide and the warmth. The rise, the miraculous light, then…her face, wide-eyed and horrified, burst into the image.

No!

Was it her voice or his own?

A streak of pain arced down his shoulder and red blazed behind his eyes, matching the agony.

Rigid with surprise as much as discomfort, Voss opened his eyes. He saw the woman, the crimson and golden room, the tall, pale candles flickering and casting delicate shadows. Blood trailed sleek against her white skin, still pooled hot in his mouth, the essence on his tongue.

Voss caught his breath, working through the sudden onslaught of pain to steady his breathing. To bring himself back here, where he could find release from what pounded through his veins.

She looked up at him, lust and laziness in her eyes as she reached for his shoulders, wanting to draw him back down. Her eyes weren’t right. They weren’t catlike, exotic enough. Her mouth…her face…no.

He couldn’t keep from a quick glance above, knowing that Angelica was there. Two floors higher, safely ensconced here at Rubey’s, where no one would think to look for them. She was so very near, but the ceiling hung low and heavy and impenetrable.

He could send for her. Simple. Get it over with.

The pain had lessened slightly. He could breathe. Think. Why did she haunt him so?

“Voss,” the girl murmured. Her hand slid lower between them, between their hot, slick bodies. Her eyes were glazed, desperate. She licked her lips, shifted against him, closed her fingers more insistently.

He could do that to Angelica. He could make her cry and moan and want him like he wanted her. Like they all wanted him.

She could help him, and he…he could help her. And have her.

Show her the world of desire and passion.

She was two floors above. Unprotected. Virginal and waiting.

A rush of desire flooded him and Voss’s breathing deepened. He could still smell her on his fingers from when they’d buried into her hair during their kiss. He thought of how she would smell, close, naked and writhing against him. Her breast heavy in his hand, her hair clinging to the damp of her skin.

Her eyes, heavy with desire after their kiss, rose in his mind. They beckoned, and then suddenly widened with horror and shock.

Fear.

He’d pulled back by now, enough that the sticky heat of body against body had lessened. Voss heard his own breathing in a room that had become nearly silent. It rasped unsteadily and he hated the weakness it portended.

The throb at the back of his shoulder pounded harder. Insistent. Go…go…go.

Take.

Dull pain turned burning and sharp and reminded him that he had no reason for such deprivation. No reason to resist, to deny himself.

Nothing to fear.

Voss turned back to the woman. Easy, familiar relief.

Not Angelica.

The blaze shocked him and Voss gasped. Luce’s dark soul. The devil wanted him to do it. To take her.

Angelica.

Not now, he told himself. And his Mark. Not yet. After I get what I need. After she does what I need.

Then he would take.

Ignoring the pain, driving it away, he lunged for the softness of the woman, buried himself, his senses, his mind, in the moment as he had done so many times before.

Later, sometime much later, he woke, naked, amid twisted sheets stained with blood. He remembered, vaguely, the dark-haired woman. And the blonde after her and the other brunette. The desperate need, the thirst he’d tried to quench. Over and over.

Then…dark dreams he’d tried to avoid, the face of Brickbank. His impaled body. Even the wisp of his soul, spiraling away in the darkness. Horrifying.

Of Angelica, white and sleek. Dark-eyed, tempting, begging.

And Lucifer.

In his dreams?

Voss sat up, his head pounding as if he’d drank a full bottle of blood whiskey.

Bloody damned hell.

Lucifer had only visited him in his dreams once before. The night he’d come to offer his unholy bargain, the temptation of a lifetime.

Slender and dark of hair, bright blue of eyes, pointed of chin and jaw and angular of body, Lucifer wasn’t unpleasant to look at. But nor was looking upon him easy or comfortable. There was too much darkness behind those shocking blue eyes.

Sunlight seeped from behind the heavy shutters and curtains in his room and Voss stared at the shape it cast. The last time he’d touched sunlight had been the morning after Lucifer’s nocturnal visit.

He hadn’t realized what it would do to him. He hadn’t realized the dream, the covenant, had been real.

He hadn’t been touched by a sunbeam since.

A cold chill settled over him. Why had Luce appeared in his dream? To remind him of the unholy bargain they’d made?

He could remember nothing but his presence, his spectral face. Smiling that easy, smug smile that said he knew a man’s every desire. And that he could fulfill it in every way.

Voss’s legs felt weak and when he moved to haul himself out of bed, the skin and muscle beneath his right shoulder protested with pain. As he turned, he saw the Mark in a mirror and paused…trapped by the sight.

Not like Dimitri’s, whose Mark was black and so thick and raised it seemed to visibly throb. But Voss’s was certainly more prominent than he’d ever seen it.

The ache was bearable, but insistent and penetrating. He moved his arm gingerly, then reached behind to touch the marks. Normally he felt no difference between the black rootlike insignia and his flesh, but now there was a slight swelling and a bit of warmth there.

Voss turned away from the reflection and rang for a bath. He wouldn’t go to Angelica sweaty and dirty from his night of blind pleasure.

But nor did he feel remorse for taking what he needed and craved. It was his right, his compulsion. His compensation from Lucifer: never-ending, unrepentant self-indulgence.

He wouldn’t hurt her; he wasn’t like Cezar Moldavi who caused pain simply for the sake of it, as a revenge for all of the pain inflicted on him during his mortal years.

No, he wouldn’t hurt Angelica. But he would have her.

And he wouldn’t wait much longer.

Dimitri was tired and annoyed. Not particularly in that order. Definitely not in that order.

In fact, annoyed wasn’t a strong enough word for how he was feeling. Livid. That was it.

He glared down at the figure standing between him and his only chance at a modicum of relief. No.