Unbitten (40 page)

Henri moved closer and pressed himself into her. Jo
gratefully rubbed herself on his cock, and they swayed for
a moment, both of them losing their sense of themselves in
space because the pleasure was so intense.

Finally Jo couldn’t stand it another minute. She
grabbed the sides of her shirt and tore them apart, sending
buttons flying. She fell back on Henri’s large bed
and pulled him down on top of her.

“I want you to ravish me,” she said, whispering
into his ear, “and I want you to do it
now
.”

Henri growled that low growl that got her even more
aroused.

Henri propped himself on his elbows and pushed himself
against her. First his cock was pressing against her belly,
and then he moved lower, then lower again, his cock feeling
to Jo like a red-hot length of iron, a red-hot length of
iron that she desired above all else.

Henri, still on his elbows, rocked his hips into her and
leaned down to kiss her cupcake breasts. He touched her
nipples lightly with his tongue and she arched her back,
pushing herself up at him. He murmured, Jo couldn’t
even tell what, except that whatever it was felt like
lightning when he sucked her nipple and murmured at the
same time, his hips moving faster now, his red-hot cock
rubbing her in her most sensitive place where it literally
felt as though showers of sparks must be flying out to
cover the bed.

“I need you now,” said Henri, his voice
breaking just barely perceptibly, and he moved his cock
right to her opening, and teased her for only a moment, all
he could stand, before plunging himself into her with a
groan.

“Ohh,” murmured Jo as he thrust inside her. Her
eyes were closed and she wasn’t sure whether she was
on the floor or on the bed or upside down or anywhere at
all, her whole consciousness was swirling and almost
unbearably heated up and wonderfully confused and lost and
intensely pleasurable. He was thrusting and caressing her
breast and kissing her neck and it was all pushing her
right up to the edge again.

Suddenly she opened her eyes, and Henri was looking right
at her, right into her eyes, and he bucked, and waves of
pleasure broke over her, as they kept looking into each
other’s eyes, kept holding on to each other, kept
feeling the connection of love as their bodies crashed into
orgasm.

Jo and Henri didn’t talk then; they didn’t need
to. They lay in Henri’s dark chamber with the candles
flickering, their bodies pressed together, their hands
stroking the other or being still, and before very long the
stroking became more interested, more intent, until Henri
grabbed Jo’s hand and put it on his cock, which had
sprung up quite readily for a 208-year-old guy.

She wrapped her hands around it, she sucked it, she kissed
it, and before long she straddled him and put it inside
her, and after that he went down on her with a tonguing
technique he invented on the spot, taking Jo to peaks of
intense pleasure beyond anything she had ever experienced
or imagined, and the two of them sailed off on another new
voyage of bliss, until eventually they fell into an
exhausted and extremely satisfied sleep, arms and legs
entwined, the candles guttering, and then dark.

It was dinnertime. The early November dark was even darker
for the heavy cloud cover hiding the moon and stars.
Dominic and Maloney had walked all over Mourency, looking
in at all the public places, hoping to find the
labri
Roxanne. Once they had her, they could hand
her over to Pierre who would be in such a hurry to get her
alone, he would fork over the rest of the documents the
Boss wanted without a peep. And Dominic could go home and
get back to his everyday vampire life.

“I will not miss Madame,” grumbled Dominic,
getting ahead of himself a little, as though he had already
left the inn for good. “And I will not miss Mourency,
either,” he said, peering in the window of one of the
last places they could think to look for Roxanne.

The small restaurant was about half-full, with a family of
tourists and their pack of unruly children, and a few
locals, bent over bowls of stew.

“Look at that man!” yelled one of the children,
pointing at Maloney, who was not so much peering in the
window as standing directly in front of it with his nose
pressed against the glass.

“Maloney!” hissed Dominic. “Step back!
Move along!”

“Which one?” said Maloney, confused. “We
gonna eat in there? It looks good.”

“We’re not eating now, we’re looking for
Roxanne, remember? We can’t miss her–spiked-up,
East Village hair, green streak, always wears black. You
know the type.”

“I don’t see her,” said Maloney.

“Keep looking,” said Dominic.
“That’s our job right now, to find her
and…grab her.”

“I’ll grab,” said Maloney.

“You do that,” said Dominic.

He sighed. She was not in town, not in any bar or
restaurant anyway. She wouldn’t have gotten her own
room, not when they had a place for free. So where could
she be?

Suddenly, Dominic knew exactly where she was. He
couldn’t believe he hadn’t realized it at once.
That little sneak Pierre had found her at the train
station, and snatched her up! Dominic remembered now, too
late, that Pierre had bragged about hunting near the
station. Doubtless he had gotten really lucky for once in
his life.

Dominic had no idea how they were going to get the
documents from Pierre now. By not making sure they got to
Roxanne first, they’d lost their main leverage. Maybe
the information on whipster Pierre had been pestering for
would do it. Or maybe Maloney could just beat him to a
pulp. But whatever, the important thing now was to find
them.

“Come on, Maloney, we’re going to
Pierre’s farm. I have a feeling Roxanne’s out
there, waiting for us.”

The girl’s skin was ghostly white. Her body was on a
narrow platform made of thin green branches lashed
together, with poles extending from the four corners; under
her, and around her, were bunches of herbs, both green and
dry. The air was pungent from the herbs, and pungent from
the smells of the three women who were fussing over her,
all of them dressed in dark, bedraggled, raggedy clothing,
and seeming to communicate with various calls and caws and
bird-like shrieks.

It looked as though the women–who were witches, it is
true, although they did not call themselves that, having
abandoned human language in the wake of one of the purges
that had very nearly extinguished their kind
altogether–were readying the girl for something, a
kind of ceremony perhaps, as they arranged dried flowers in
her hair, threw different-colored powders over her, and
continued with their cawing, their cooing, with an
occasional squawk, cackle, and hoot.

Jo was somewhere between asleep and awake, pressing
Henri’s arms against her chest as he held her,
spooning, from behind. Henri was sleeping a deep,
restorative sleep, his body more relaxed than it had been
in ages, but Jo was restless as ever, turning one way and
then another, dreaming crazy dreams (blood! witches!
trophies!), waking for an instant and then smiling
contentedly at Henri’s touch, but the closeness of
him, and the smell of him, were too stimulating for her to
sleep well.

Finally, she woke all the way up, and feeling exhausted,
decided to go back to her room for the rest of the night.
She kissed Henri on the forehead, brushing some curls back
from his face, and seeing that he was out cold, made her
way upstairs.

She found a blank scrap of paper in the maelstrom that was
his desk, and scribbled a note, just a heart with the words
“see you at breakfast”. I’m not really a
note-with-hearts kind of woman. Or at least, I didn’t
used to be, she thought, smiling to herself.

It was dark outside. The door slid closed behind her and
she went down the steps and onto the gravel path, on the
way back to the Château and her own bed. The night
sky was dark, with clouds covering both the moon and stars,
but the path was very light and she could just make it out
well enough to see where she was going.

Only the smallest little bit of her attention was directed
to where she was going–the rest was wrapped up in
Henri, in remembering his forceful and thrilling attention,
the beautiful expression in his eyes as he made love to
her, and the state of extreme excitement and pleasure he
had brought her to.

But this thing with Henri is so far beyond just good sex. I
finally get it, she thought, the feel of his arms wrapping
her up tight so vivid it felt as though he were right there
with her as she walked down the path.

Jo heard a scurrying sound off to the left. She tried to
follow what it was but could see nothing except possibly a
sort of blur. Which made no sense. So hard to see in this
cloudy darkness, she thought. The scurrying sound was
diminishing now. It must have been some kind of
animal–a marmot, a polecat, a
hedgehog–something she’d heard of but never
actually seen in real life.

Her thoughts returned immediately to Henri, and as she
walked to her room and folded back the crisp covers and
slid into bed, he was with her, his ridiculously strong
arms holding her, his ridiculously strong legs wrapped
around her, and most of all, the thing she’d never
experienced until this night–the look on his face
that told her how much he loved her and understood her and
needed her.

Tristan and Roland showed up at the Château in
mid-afternoon on the following day. They wanted to start
their poking around when the staff was already involved in
their morning work and they could slip in with the least
amount of hubbub. Tristan had called Angélique to
let her know they were coming; she had not sounded exactly
welcoming. He pulled up to the impressive gate and pushed
the button, waiting for her to buzz them in.

“The day-to-day of police work, it is very dull,
isn’t it?” said Tristan, because he did not
really expect to succeed at finding Callie Armstrong, and
the prospect of searching the entire Château and its
grounds was daunting.