The Vampire Narcise (Regency Draculia 3)

Had she trusted him only to be betrayed and set aside?

At last, after neither David nor Cale appeared for her lesson for the third week, she went in search of Cezar, noting vaguely that all of the servants seemed to be otherwise occupied. His private parlor, where he kept the dish of sparrow feathers, was empty, but...

She stepped just inside the door, despite the deterrent of the feathers. She smelled him. Giordan. Giordan had been here recently.

The flush of a thrill warmed her and her heart began to pound with hope. She had no doubt, no doubt at all that Giordan would find a way to free her from Cezar. He'd been here, recently, very recently. Earlier today.

It was at that moment that two things happened: the first-and now, much later, she understood the significance-was that the ever-present tray with feathers was not in the chamber. The second was that she noticed that, across the parlor, the door to Cezar's private bedchamber was slightly open. And there were sounds and scents coming from inside...heavy, erotic, strong scents.

Even now, in her mind, her memory of it, Narcise screamed at herself don't go over there...

But she did. Whether she realized what it was, whether it was the scent on the air, permeating the chamber, or whether there was some other reason she was compelled to walk on silent feet over to the chamber door...

To peer around the crack and to look in...no, no, noooooo, don't...but she does it again...she looks in...

At first, she doesn't realize what she sees. It's the scent of arousal...heavy and thick...of lifeblood and eroticism and man.... It catches her, giving that little tug in the center of her belly that spears down low and causes desire....

The chamber is lit well enough by the blazing fire that Cezar always keeps, and several lamps, turned up to a golden glow. There is a massive bed, its curtains pulled wide, to one side. A large divan and two chairs are arranged in front of the fire. A table covered with glasses and bottles sits next to it, and even from here, she can see that three of the four bottles are empty. The scent of whiskey and blood mingle strongly with musk and virility.

There are two people, not on the bed, but on the divan, directly in front of the raging fire, opposite the door around which she peers. Since her brother's varied proclivities aren't unknown to her, she's not surprised to see that he's with a man.

She can't see well, she's not even certain why she's compelled to watch-perhaps the scent hooked into her mind and dragged her there-but the first glimpse of a pale, slender hand curling over a strong, sleek shoulder makes her breath seize.

There is a cast of amber light over his skin, over the familiar golden curve of arms and shoulders now marred with bitemarks, shadowed by the flickering fire...the golden brush of lamplight over the strong profile with the patrician nose, so handsome, so perfect...the glow creating a nimbus from behind thick, dark curls, and an unholy halo around an even darker head adjacent to his.

She can't breathe. The floor is falling away from her feet as if she is standing on a house of cards, and her body ceases. Everything halts: breath, heart, sensation, emotion.

His rich, tawny skin is slick with perspiration, shadowed from the hands on him...his face half turned from the door, etched tight with pleasure and pain. His lips, drawn back from his mouth in some sort of groan or grimace as fangs drive into his shoulder...

For all of the details of that moment, Narcise remembered hardly anything of what happened afterward. She must have made her way from the chamber, she must not have screamed despite the shrieking and wailing inside her, stumbling from the private parlor, somehow back to her own room before her body began to feel again.

Shattered.

And then, after that, it was dull and empty.

Sometime later-days, she thought, based on the number of times a servant came for her to feed...but she had no true concept of time for a while-Cezar sent for her.

She had no choice but to answer his summons, hardly aware of what she was doing. When she walked into Cezar's private parlor, the conduit that had led to her destruction, Giordan was there.

Cezar was sitting in one of the chairs, looking complacent and relaxed. "You have a visitor, Narcise," he said with great congeniality.

"He's not my visitor," she managed to say. Despite her best efforts, her voice shook. Rage and pain threatened to erupt.

Cale turned from where he'd been standing in the corner, his back to the room, his broad shoulders straight with tension. His eyes were bright-too bright. And yet the skin around them was tight. He was fully, formally dressed, but his clothing was wrinkled, less than perfect.

He looked weary-and well he should, based on what she'd witnessed. Narcise's stomach threatened to revolt just then and despite the fact that she hadn't fed for who knew how long, she knew something would come up anyway.

"Narcise," Giordan said. His voice was rough and low. But anger and command hummed beneath.

Why was he angry with her?

She couldn't-she fled the room, the world spinning into hot red nausea. She couldn't think, couldn't comprehend, could hardly feel. Nothing but the raging whirl of her emotions.

He came after her, out of the chamber into a corridor that was uncharacteristically deserted. "Narcise."

His scent came with him-and with it, a revolting mix of opium, hashish, whiskey, blood. And Cezar. She steadied herself against the wall, trying to block the images that assaulted her, that matched the stew of debauchery emanating from him. The scents of his betrayal.

Somehow, from the depths of herself, she managed to find words. His words. "'It's you, Narcise. It's only you.'" She threw them back into his face, the ones that had sustained her for weeks. "You disgust me."

"By the Devil, you can't truly believe-"

"I don't have to believe. I saw. You." Her voice broke and she felt herself falling back into that chasm of desolation and grief, a whirlwind of blackness. Disbelief and pain. Such pain. She had to get away from him. A roaring filled her ears, the deep, dark roar of hatred and agony. "Get away from me."

He stepped toward her, grabbing her arm. "Do you have any idea what I've done for you?" His voice raw, his face, terrible, was close to hers. She hardly heard the words, for they were lost in the horrible swirling scent of blood on his breath, the smells of depravity and sweat and other darkness.

She talked over him, the roaring in her mind and heart blocking his words as she spewed her pain onto him. "You've completely destroyed me. Something even my brother wasn't able to do, in decades." She jerked her arm from his fingers with a sharp movement, turning away, starting back down the corridor. "Get away from me." Her voice threatened to break, but she wouldn't allow it. "Get away."