Silken Rapture (Princes of the Underground 2)

Venus moaned. Titurino groaned in reply as her pleasure resonated into his sensitive flesh.

A moment later, Isabel heard a muffled feminine cry and saw the woman’s body shudder. Her aura altered before Isabel’s eyes from a pulsating spectrum of pink to red to magenta with shards of gold spiking through it. Cane’s head moved more rapidly. He seemed so avid to experience the woman’s pleasure, to taste it on his tongue, as though he could actually swallow the energy of her bliss, as if it could nourish him.

Isabel didn’t realize just how hungry Aubrey was for the woman until he lifted his head and smoothed his hand over the expanse of an inner thigh. His eyelids were heavy from arousal. Two long fangs extended down over his lower lip.

He lowered his head, obviously intent on biting flesh.

“No,” Isabel cried out in shock. The experience had gone from witnessing a scene of tender, potent eroticism to one of nightmare proportions in a second.

Titurino’s head whipped around at the sound of her voice. Aubrey looked up slowly. He smiled, his fangs still extended, his nostrils flaring. It struck her like a slap to the face that he’d known she’d watched them all along. How that was possible, she didn’t know, but his calm, knowing expression spoke volumes.

She turned and rushed across the grand gallery toward the wide staircase, her only thought to get back to the room where she’d awakened. If she returned to bed and slept, would this strange dream come to an end? Would she wake up from her nap in her Ritz London hotel room, needing to prepare for the reception in her honor to be held at the University of London’s Senate House?

You already got ready for that reception, her mind screamed as she leapt up the marble steps. She saw herself putting on makeup and styling her hair in the mirror. Isabel perfectly recalled zipping up the purple dress she’d bought special for the occasion, remembered walking down the hallway toward the elevators, planning to meet Lester in the lobby, then…

Nothing. A black spot in her memory.

The recollection made her stumble. She put out her hands to block her fall on the marble steps. The knife clattered onto hard stone and she was airborne.

Her fall ceased abruptly. She was in someone’s arms…a large, solid someone.

“What in the… Put me—” Her agitated sputter came to an abrupt halt when she saw the face of the man who held her. She gaped, suddenly convinced that her bizarre dream had escalated to include being swept into the embrace of intimidating dark angels.

Memories collided in her brain, causing a frightening chaos of vision, sound and emotion.

She cursed and began to struggle like mad in the man’s arms, sent into a frenzy of panic. When she realized he still held her effortlessly, she drove up on his nose with the hard ridge of her palm.

He grunted in pained surprise. “What in bloody hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded in a furious, rough voice.

“Let go of me,” she grated out. She raised an elbow and cocked it in preparation for a jab. She didn’t have a chance to strike at her captor again, however. He abruptly set her down on a step as if he were dropping a sack of doorknobs. Her teeth struck together like clacking pebbles in her head. She immediately reached for the knife she’d dropped, but he kicked it away from her gloved hand with a negligent tap from a rugged black boot.

She scrambled up from the step and backed away from a dark, menacing tower of male brawn. She paused next to the banister and watched him warily, her heart beating so loud in her ears it felt as if her whole world had become the sound of her fear.

>

“I remember you. You-you—” she broke off, panting in rising agitation as she tried to gather her fragmented memories. “You were there…with that…that thing, that crystal—”

She broke off in rising confusion, her mouth hanging open.

No, that wasn’t who he was. Was it? She swam in confusion. This man…surely she knew this man?

Her memories seemed as strange and unlikely as her entire experience since waking up in the luxurious room.

She couldn’t pull her gaze from his eyes. They were singular—not green, exactly, but green, amber, gray and brown blended, hundreds of thousands of tiny crystalline dots. The first impression was of dark green until one took a second glance and was drawn into the depths.

Agate eyes.

The eyes were the same as her nightmare’s, but this man possessed hair—beautiful hair, thick, black and glossy. His jaw was shadowed with whiskers. He was tall—much taller than most men. His jean-clad legs seemed impossibly long from her sitting position, his torso was lean and sinewy. He gave the impression of power leashed, strength coiled tight. He arched one raven brow at her words, the subtle expression striking her as surreal on a face that otherwise might have been carved in rock.

“I was there, with the crystal,” he said.

“You-you kidnapped me. Why?”

“I never kidnapped you,” he said in a quiet, seething tone. “Do you think I’d choose to have you here?” He looked away from her, seeming impatient, edgy. “I have brought you to Sanctuary as my prisoner, but it wasn’t me who wanted you.”

“But…I saw you. I remember your face, only—”

She hesitated as she studied him again with growing wonder. He wore faded jeans and an untucked, dark green cotton T-shirt that ghosted his lean torso. His height and dark, piratical looks would certainly peak interest on a London street, but he could still pass as…normal. He might have, anyway, to most people. People who didn’t have her special sight.