A Tale of Two Vampires (13 page)

“Great.” Io’s voice interrupted his blissful sense of sexually sated oblivion. He opened his eyes and looked down to where she had pushed herself off his chest, her knees still clasping his hips. “Now I can add dry-humping a stranger to my list of sexual harassment sins. Thank you, Nikola, thank you so very much.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, sensing that for some reason she didn’t mean the words literally. She seemed slightly annoyed, as a matter of fact. He wondered why that would be when she had enjoyed herself as much as he had. Could it be because he had spilled his seed on her undergarment, thereby staining it? He frowned at the undergarment in question.

“What the hell are you doing frowning at my lady parts?”

Io sounded outraged.

“I’m not frowning at them.”

“You are. Your eyebrows are all pulled down between your gorgeous eyes, making me want to run my fingers along them to smooth them out. That, sir, is a frown, and it’s directed at my nether bits. There’s nothing there to frown at, I assure you. I pruned before I came to Austria, not that I expected to get it on with anyone, and especially not that we’re going to hook up.” She paused. “Other than what we’ve already done, obviously. But that’s not really going gung ho forward, is it? It was just kind of quasi there.”

He had absolutely no idea what she was going on about, so he focused on the one thing that did make sense. “My eyes are sufficiently smooth, thank you,” he corrected her, still frowning at that part of her that was so tantalizingly close. It was true that the entire front of the pale peach undergarment was wet with his seed, but that wasn’t what bothered him.

“You know what I mean. Why are you frowning at my crotch?”

“I am frowning at that ridiculous garment you are wearing to hide it from my view.”

She looked startled for a moment before looking down to where his penis—now succumbing to a restful state—lay against her pubic mound. “My…underwear?”

“Whatever it is called, I dislike it.”

“It’s Victoria’s Secret, you boob! It’s very expensive! I got it for myself last Christmas, before I was fired by my asshat of a boss. Besides, it matches the bra.”

“I don’t care what it matches, or whose secret it is, I dislike it because it keeps your flesh from meeting mine as is right and proper. Remove it immediately.”

“Look, I may have done things with you that I never do with a man I’ve just met, but that doesn’t give you the right to demand I remove my undies even if they are a bit ooky now because you got all excited on them. Not that I’m holding you entirely to blame for that, since your vamp-biting thing made me crazy wild with lust. But still, it’s not going to happen, so just get over it already.” She got to her feet and stalked over to where the remains of her gown lay on the ground.

Nikola stared up at the lightening sky and considered and discarded a number of scenarios in which he showed Io that he was not the type of man who cared what others thought or felt, and decided, in the end, to be magnanimous. He would allow her to continue believing that she had every right to speak to him in that wholly irreverent manner, but only so long as it took to write his brilliant paper and receive his award. In the meantime, he would sate himself on her, giving in to the siren lure of her delicious person, and take his fill, then simply walk away from her and continue on with his life.

The Incredible Adventures of Iolanthe Tennyson

July 13

I’m a bit embarrassed to write what happened early this morning. Oh, it was totally Nikola’s fault, because it’s obvious that he did something to my brain when he sucked my blood and all, but even with the vampire compulsion or thrall or whatever it is that vamps do to ensnare innocent women’s minds and make them their love slaves, it was still me that jumped his bones. Repeatedly.

And enjoyed every damned second of it.

“You are wholly to blame for this,” I pointed out to Nikola a short while after the scene on the side of the road.

“A fact which I have admitted, and reassured you that I will replace your gown,” he said in that yummy British accent he had. That voice seemed to do something to me, make all of my innards vibrate with happiness every time he spoke. I told my innards to cool it, that we’d shamed ourselves enough for one day.

“I was actually talking about the fact that you enslaved my mind with your lustful thoughts rather than the fact that you ripped my brand-new sundress to shreds,” I corrected him, glancing down at myself. With my dress in tatters, I wore his shirt and coat, the former of which reached down to my knees since it was exceptionally long.

“I didn’t enslave your mind.” Nikola rode next to me, the rosy fingers of dawn managing to caress his bare chest and arms in a way that made my breath stop in my lungs. “I cannot enslave anyone’s mind.”

I cleared my throat and dragged my eyes off him.

“Then you enthralled me or did something to make me your love slave.”

He sighed. “I’ve just told you that I cannot do that. That’s not to say I wouldn’t if I could, because the idea of being surrounded by love slaves appeals to me, and being a man, I am naturally in need of many women to attend to my varied sexual needs, but unfortunately, I have not yet discovered that a Dark One can enslave minds.”

“You’d love a herd of love-struck women swooning over you,” I said with a glare at him. The dawg!

“It is the way of things,” he agreed.

I was about to tell him what I thought of that sentiment when a thought occurred to me. “You said your wife has been dead for a bit?”

“Seven years, yes.” He shot me a curious look.

“How long were you married?”

The look got significantly more pointed. “Sixteen years.”

“And what did your wife think of you messing around with this great big herd of women that your manful lusts demanded?”

He stiffened in the saddle, making his horse do a little side step that he quickly got under control. “Madame, I can assure you that my wife never had complaints about me in that regard.”

For some reason, his outrage made me want to giggle. Oh, I had his number all right—he was all bark and little bite.

So to speak.

“However, I have been without a wife for many years, and it is a well-known fact that men have sexual needs greater than those of women.”

My amusement faded. “You are so—that is utter and complete bullshit! It is
not
a well-known fact! It’s a well-known fallacy put around by a bunch of horny men who want to justify having sex with every woman they can sweet-talk into bed, that’s all. For your information, women have the same amount of sexual needs as men. Boy, you guys really did have some messed-up ideas about things.”

“I have read many scientific papers on the subject, and they all agree that men’s needs are more prevalent and varied than women’s.”

“You can stuff your scientific papers where the sun don’t shine as far as I’m concerned.”

“Doesn’t.”

I gawked at him for a few seconds.

“The correct grammar is ‘where the sun doesn’t shine.’” He frowned as he thought. “Although that is an odd thing to say. If you meant night, why did you not simply say ‘at night’?”

“I know what the correct grammar is, you ignoramus! It’s a saying. It means you can shove your outdated, woman-stifling, chauvinistic ideas up your butt.”

His eyebrows rose a quarter of an inch. “I do not at all enjoy that sort of thing, either. And if you do, I regret to inform you—”

“No!” Thor, Imogen’s horse, tossed his head around at my shriek. I lowered my voice and gritted my teeth. “I don’t like that, either, not that I’ve tried it, but it’s not something I intend to experiment with, so let’s move past that, shall we?”

“You’re the one who brought it up,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t mean to literally stick something up your—” I took a deep breath, struggling to get a good, solid grip on my temper, which was not an easy task when Nikola seemed determined to drive me bonkers. “I don’t even remember how we got onto the subject of your ridiculous ideas about women and sex.”

“You accused me of making you my love slave, which is lamentably incorrect, because if you were my love slave, you would even now be impaled on my penis.”

The image of that so filled my mind, I had to take a minute or two to get past it. “Er…while we were on the horse?” I eventually managed to ask, unable to keep myself from glancing at his lap.

His eyebrows rose again. “If you desire. I’ve heard it can be stimulating, assuming both persons have good seats.”

That thought kept us both quiet for a short bit. After realizing that I was considering just where my arms and legs would go with regards to his saddle, I gave myself another mental scold, and returned to the matter at hand. “I was simply pointing out that someone is responsible for my state of mind. How else do you explain the fact that I’ve jumped you three times now?”

He glanced at me with those wickedly gorgeous pale blue eyes, a little smile dancing on his lips. “Perhaps you simply desire me as much as I desire you.”

“We just met, and I’m the sort of a woman who likes men for their minds, not their bodies. It’s a well-known fact among my friends that I have to know a man for some time before I get sexually interested. Gretl says I’m too picky that way, but it’s just the way I am. So clearly, this whole situation with me wanting to do things to you is your fault, and not mine.”

“Indeed.” That was all he said, but when he did so, he brushed a bug off his chest. Instantly, my gaze went to his bare chest, my hands tingling with the desire to stroke the lovely muscles that made up some really spectacular viewing.

Oh, dear lord, I was doing it again! Honestly, I wasn’t such a ninny that I couldn’t be near the man without wanting him to do all sorts of erotic things to me.

But I want to do those erotic things. Especially that one where you spread oil on us both and slither around on top of me.

“And you can stop egging on my poor, deluded brain! Besides, that’s eavesdropping pure and simple, and I’m not going to stand for it. Now, what we need here is to get organized.”

“I am completely organized,” Nikola said blandly. “Every aspect of my life is orderly and well-thought-out. I run my house with a firm hand. My children and servants know that should they disorder that to which I have brought order, they will suffer the most grievous of penalties. Dedicated study to the unknown, order, and a calm clarity of mind are all my bywords. In short, madame, I am the personification of the word organized.”

I murmured a word to myself that was not at all polite, and gave some thought to the situation. “It’s clear that somehow that swirly thing in the woods was responsible for me being zapped back here. Therefore, I need to find it again, and let it send me back where I belong.”

“You have not fully explained this swirly thing, as you call it. What, exactly, is it?”

“It’s kind of hard to describe.” I spent a few seconds summoning my memories, and explained to Nikola the happenings in the woods.

“I do not understand this photograph that you keep referring to,” he said after a long pause. He had pulled out his notebook from a pocket in his breeches, and made a brief note or two. “Nor why a cloud of smoke had the ability to alter time.”

“The swirly thing wasn’t really smoke—it just kind of looked smoky. It was more like—I don’t know—light, I guess. Swirls of light twisting around on itself. And a photograph is like a painting, only more realistic. It’s a two-dimensional representation of an object or scene.”

“Indeed.” He made a few more notes. I smiled to myself. I’d never thought that I was an overly curious person, but the fact that Nikola’s interest in the world around him was clearly far more developed than mine tickled me.

It also made me feel profoundly stupid about those things that people in my time took for granted.

“And why were you in the woods to begin with?”

“Hmm? Oh, I was looking for a setting to take some pictures of Imogen, but she—” The words stopped as a memory of Imogen’s face rose with horrible clarity in my mind.

Imogen refused to go to the woods because she said that’s where her uncles had killed her father. Slowly, I turned to look at Nikola. He rode beside me, one hand holding the reins against his thigh while the other hand flipped through the pages of his notebook.

I was confused pure and simple—Imogen said her father was killed in the woods one fateful night, while her brother had claimed he was alive and well and living in South America, enjoying the scantily clad women that abounded there.

My eyes narrowed at Nikola. I had no difficulty imagining him being in seventh heaven in such a surrounding.

But which of the siblings was right? Had Benedikt lied to me about his father being alive? Or had Imogen? And if Imogen was telling the truth—a cold wave swept over me despite the warmth of Nikola’s coat. “The anniversary of his death is in a couple of days,” I said softly, repeating the words Imogen had spoken to me.

“Whose death?” Nikola asked, looking up from his notebook.

“Er…no one’s.”

A chill swept over me. It was clear now that Imogen had been speaking the truth. No doubt she had told her younger brother a lie to keep him from being traumatized by the true events of that dreadful day.