The Vampire Narcise (Regency Draculia 3)

"Narcise-" he began, his bruised lips hardly moving.

But with the pleasure and the familiarity, she'd fallen back into those horrible memories, the black, dark days of his betrayal...the pain was fresh and raw once again.

"By the Devil's dark soul, yes, I hate you. I saw you. With Cezar. It's hard to miss the expression of erotic pleasure on a man's face-the Fates know I've seen enough of that." She swallowed, her throat dry and scratchy. "I believed you. I believed in you. You destroyed me." Her voice broke a little at the end and she swallowed again hard, angry at her show of weakness. "And I'll hate you forever for it."

There was a long silence as they stared at each other. Loathing and dark emotion vibrated between them as they faced each other on the dark and busy street.

"Forever is a very long time," he said at last, his voice a mere rumble.

"And we'll both be alive for it, won't we? Goodbye, Giordan," she said, and walked off, her knees trembling, her insides twisting. She squeezed her eyes closed against threatening tears.

She suspected that he would follow her again, and when she got to the end of the street, she looked back covertly.

But he was walking away, his hair and the tops of his shoulders dusted with moonlight as he strode off.

Chapter 18

Giordan hardly made it around the corner before his belly rebelled.

By God, he hadn't even fed on her, but it didn't seem to matter. His body was reacting to the unfamiliar and fierce show of violence and hatred he'd just lived. As he sagged against a brick wall, emptying his stomach, he prayed that Narcise wouldn't see or hear him.

When he finally finished, still trembling with the force of it all, he swiped the back of a hand over his mouth as he walked off into the night.

Wrung out from more than simply the evacuation of the contents of his stomach, aware that Narcise hadn't finished off the bite on the side of his neck so that it still oozed a bit of blood, Giordan found himself back at Rubey's, where he'd been going when he first saw Narcise leaving. He'd been briefly at Rubey's private residence earlier, where he'd been keeping his own rooms for the last few months. She'd told him the news from Woodmore about Scotland, and Giordan was on his way to meet her at the pleasure house when he spied Narcise. He had no choice but to follow her.

"Giordan, bless the Virgin, what has happened?" Rubey said when she came rushing into the private chamber he'd taken over, ordering one of the girls out. As the current favorite of the mistress, and soon to be investor, he had that power. "Are you ill?" she asked.

Even here, in this place, he could scent Narcise...and the very aroma made his insides unsteady. "Not anymore."

Rubey came over and brushed the hair from his temples, which clung to the warm, damp skin. She tsked when she yanked at his shirt collar to reveal the bitemarks. "And you're about lying to me, Giordan Cale." She smelled of rose and gardenia-sweet and floral, without being too cloying.

He closed his eyes at her touch, trying to subdue the sharp, sudden yearning for something else. Something more.

Something he'd once had.

He'd betrayed his own heart and soul by fairly attacking Narcise. He'd wanted to hurt her-with words and deed-even as he desired her. Craved her.

How shameful and ironic that he'd resorted to such a frenzy. He would have sunk his fangs into her, taken and seized what she'd offered...but somehow sanity had at last reigned.

The destructiveness had come not only from mere thoughts, but from his body. He'd been in control of such fury for so long...what had happened tonight?

"What's gone on, Giordan? Will you not tell me?" Rubey, who should have been very busy attending to her girls and clients, sat next to him, giving him her full attention.

"There is nothing to tell," he said, suddenly wondering why he'd come here. He should have gone back to his rooms and sent for Kritanu.

It was the elderly Indian man who'd helped him understand what was happening to him after that pivotal, sunny day in the alley when his Mark had burned. Drishni, one of the vintages at Chateau Riche, had done her best to help him when he came back and kept vomiting every time he fed...but it wasn't until Giordan spoke with Kritanu that he'd begun to understand how he'd changed.

His body weakened and abused, he'd spiraled so far down into darkness and despair, violence and devastation...hopelessness...Kritanu had told him, that his mind had opened to moksha. Enlightenment.

That some strong bit of that powerful serenity and peace had found its way past the darkness of the Devil.

"And you're after lying to me, Giordan Cale, but I can see you won't change your mind." Rubey offered him her wrist as she eased herself back onto the bed next to him, propping up on the other elbow. "I can also see that you're in need of me in another way."

Giordan swallowed and hesitated...but she was right. His body felt so battered and tormented that he knew he needed sustenance. And although it wasn't what he craved, it was what he needed. And so he took her arm and slid his fangs in to drink.

Back when he was still recovering from the event in the alley, it was only by accident that Giordan had discovered he could still feed...if he were careful. This after three weeks of violently expelling the contents of his stomach after any attempt to gain sustenance. He could keep nothing down-and the lifeblood he ingested spewed forth with debilitating force, leaving his belly sore and his throat and mouth raw and parched.

His body was rejecting anything related to violence.

But at last, the tiny, dark Drishni came to him and offered herself. And when he felt the rush of her lifeblood in his mouth, pure and clean and sweet, Giordan nearly wept at the relief...because he knew. He knew she was the answer. It wasn't until later that he learned why: because she ate only vegetation, nuts and grains.

She ate nothing that had been acquired through death or violence-and it was that addiction to death and violence that his body was fighting, now that the white light of peace had found him.

During the anguish of the aftermath, Giordan could close his eyes and find the light. The same light that had flashed into his mind when he succumbed to the burning sun in the alley. "Choose."

Now, as Rubey's warm, clean blood flushed into his mouth, Giordan thought again how thankful he was that she could help him. And that she was willing to do so, and was intelligent and pragmatic about it all.

It would have been a great deal easier if he could have loved her.

He drank without greed, easily dismissing the little tingle of awareness and arousal that began reflexively during the process. Although her breathing shifted, and he felt her body begin to respond to him, Rubey made no attempt to touch him as she might normally do. It was as if she realized he couldn't.