In the Heat of the Bite (19 page)

“What are ye doin’?” Rhiannon whispered, in an apparent attempt to keep inquisitive eyes from watching them.

But Matthew couldn’t answer her. He couldn’t let anyone catch a glimpse of his distended fangs. Reaching his conveyance, he pulled the door open. “Come on. In with you,” he said impatiently, glancing over her shoulder to make sure they hadn’t caught anyone’s attention. Feeling relatively safe, he looked at his driver. “Thorpe House, but take the long way.”

When Rhiannon just stood there gaping at him as he held the door open for her, Matthew lost what little sanity he had left. He picked her up and put her inside with his own strength. He barely noted that she didn’t fuss or complain. She went fairly willingly, for someone who was being tossed into a coach. He’d live to regret this, he was certain of it.

She sat back against the squabs in the dim confines of the carriage as he rapped on the roof and the carriage lurched away. She didn’t say a word. Not a single word. She just tipped her head at him and regarded him with worry on her face. She reached one hand toward him. He caught it in the air and lowered it to her lap.

“No need to worry, dearest. I’ll be all right in just a moment. I only need a moment.” He stared out the window so he could avoid looking at her.

“Can I do anythin’ ta help?” she asked, her voice soft.

She could stop smelling like gardenia blossoms. She could stop her heart from beating so he wouldn’t have to hear the gush of blood in her veins, beating a staccato rhythm that called to him unlike anything ever had before. She could close those hazel eyes and stop blinking those long, long lashes at him. She could… let him taste her.

“I don’t believe so,” he finally said as he leaned his head back against the squabs and closed his eyes. He stopped his inhale. He didn’t need to breathe. Yet the scent of her still hung in his mind like drapes over a window. He couldn’t see past it. He couldn’t move it aside. He couldn’t do a damn thing.

“How long has it been?” she asked, as she began to remove her gloves.

“Beg your pardon?” He wasn’t even certain what she’d asked.

“How long has it been since ye’ve fed, Blodswell?” she asked quietly. She worked the button free at her wrist and pulled her fingers free one by one. He could see the tattoo of her pulse beneath the delicate skin at her wrist. And it made his mouth water.

He wasn’t sure. It could have been days by now. Days since he’d taken any real sustenance. His blasted teeth wouldn’t work in any other situation. But they worked for her. Every part of his body worked for her. He tugged his jacket down to cover his lap.

“Not long,” he lied. “Why do you ask?” He rolled his head on the seat to look at her without even raising it. He hadn’t the strength. He was nearly a shell of a man, enchanted beyond belief by a weather-born witch who held everything he wanted in the world.

She reached to cup the side of his face. All he had to do was turn his head and he could sink his teeth into the delicate veins in her wrist and take from her. Instead, he took her hand in his. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he groaned.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

Oh, God, it hurt so much knowing he wanted her, needed her, had to have her but couldn’t. But that wasn’t what she meant, was it?

“Why have ye no’ fed? Tell me the truth, Blodswell.”

“Will you stop this bloody torture if I tell you? Will I have some peace?” Even as he said it, he knew there would be no peace for him. She didn’t torture him on purpose. She just… existed, and her mere existence was all it took.

Rhiannon sat up taller and appeared slightly offended. “I havena done anythin’ ta ye.”

But she had. She’d somehow enchanted him, and even now he wasn’t sure how she’d done it. And she’d asked him to court her, even if it had been a pretense in the beginning. “You haven’t called me Matthew,” he grumbled, as he couldn’t bring himself to tell her the rest.

She sighed as though dealing with an unrepentant child. “Very well, I’ll call ye Matthew. But I certainly doubt that’s what has ye so tied up in knots.”

“I am indeed tied up in knots,” he admitted.

“Why is that, Matthew?”

Matthew. She’d said it. She’d said his name. He’d imagined that when it fell from her lips it would flow from her mouth like water over a dam. Like a gentle rain falling from the sky. But it hit him like thunder. Like lightning. Like Rhiannon.

“Say it again?” he urged, taking her face in his hands as he gently pushed her hair back from her temples.

“Matthew,” she breathed. “What has come over ye?”

“I have not fed because I can’t, dearest. And to be quite honest, it’s driving me mad.” More than mad. But that was as good a description as he could come up with.

“Are ye broken?” Her face lit with a hopeful smile. “My coven sister, Elspeth, once healed a broken wolf. He’s her husband now. But if ye’re broken, I could take ye ta her. She can heal ye.”

“It’s so kind of you to offer, Rhiannon.”

She shivered lightly when he spoke her name. So, it affected her as well? Thank God he wasn’t the only one.

“But I’m afraid it’s not something that can be healed. I need to feed. That’s all.”

“But ye said ye canna? Has this happened ta ye before?”

“Never.”

“In all yer years, this has never, ever happened?”

“Never,” he repeated.

“What’s causin’ it now?” She looked perplexed.

“You are,” he said quietly as he bent and pressed his lips to hers quickly. Her blasted heartbeat quickened; he could hear it in his head. Matthew pulled back, breaking off the kiss.

She leaned closer toward him. “Are my
powers
somehow the cause? I ken when ye are around, my powers go off without me even havin’ any control. If they’ve affected ye, I’m very sorry.” She placed a hand on her heart.

“Quiet, Rhiannon,” he shushed her.

“But,” she protested mildly, confusion clouding her face.

He had to tell her. Or go mad with the knowledge. He took a deep breath. “I want you.” He smiled, allowing her to see his descended incisors. Her innocent little hand reached up, and she touched one with the pad of her thumb. Like a madman, he immediately turned and nipped her finger. Not hard enough to hurt her and only for a second. But enough to cause a drop of blood to well up on her thumb. She moved to pull her hand back, but he grabbed her wrist and stared at the essence of her. The heady aroma reached his nose. And his whole body stiffened.

“Do ye want it?” she asked innocently, and offered her thumb to him.

What had he done? He’d harmed her. To feed his own selfish needs. “I am so sorry,” he grunted out. It was all he could do to talk.

“Why? It doesna hurt.”

“It was very, very wrong of me.” So wrong. He’d never forgive himself.

But, once again, that innocent little hand rose toward him. She dragged her thumb across his lower lip, smearing her blood where he had to taste it. So, he did. He closed his eyes because he couldn’t look into the deep fathoms of hers anymore, not and feel like he was doing the right thing. He drew his lower lip between his bottom teeth, and the flavor of her washed over his tongue. She tasted like no one he’d ever had. She slipped over his senses like a silky coverlet, sliding across him like the softest of summer breezes. God, if he ever truly partook of her, he’d never be able to draw his teeth from her skin. He drew her thumb into his mouth and sucked it as hard as he could. The small wound would never appease him, but he had to taste her further.

“Something is happenin’ ta me, Matthew,” she whimpered. “Something I doona understand.” Her confusion drew him from his storm-filled haze.

“Rhiannon,” he groaned, reaching to draw her into his lap. Of course, she’d gotten his passion and his feelings in return the moment her finger had crossed his lips and they’d made that connection. “I am so sorry,” he whispered.

“What
is
that?” she asked, her head falling back on his shoulder as she relaxed into him. She pushed her thumb back up to his lip, and he gratefully took it in. She took his hand, which rested on her thigh, moved it over to her abdomen, and then slid it down. “That, Matthew. What is that?”

“Tell me what you feel?” He led her gently as he gathered her skirts into his hands and pushed them higher and higher until he could slide his hand beneath them. All the while, he went back and forth between drinking from that tiny well that was the prick on her thumb and speaking softly to her.

“My belly is all aflutter. And there’s this thump, thump, thump…” She gasped as he drew deeply on her thumb. Her desire and passion mixed with his.

He’d never been so hard in his life. He could explode any moment. She wiggled her bottom in his lap. “Be still,” he chided. If she didn’t, he’d lose his mind. Then he touched her heat, softly, with the back of his crooked index finger. Her curls were wet, her pulse pounding. “Here?” he asked, as he touched that little nub of desire.

“Aye!” she cried as she buried her face in his shoulder.

“I can make it better,” he soothed her. He drew deeply on her thumb, her blood not much more than a memory, that tiny well drying up. But the connection between them was still there. He stroked his thumb across her, strumming her higher and higher. He couldn’t resist arching into her bottom. He wanted to sink his incisors into her pretty little neck while he sank into her everywhere else. He wanted to consume her. But instead, he just sucked at that little spot on her thumb as he stroked her and watched her face, her mouth hanging open, small pants sliding past her lips to mingle with his.

He slid one finger into the silky warmth of her, just before her eyes flew open and she stared at him as he brought her to completion. Thunder may have crashed as she cried out for him, milking his finger as he continued to take her higher and higher, wringing every drop of pleasure from her.

Finally, when she’d settled in his lap, he let her pull her finger from his mouth and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close as she came back down from that storm-laden mountain of pleasure. She trembled in his arms.

“Matthew,” she sighed as he raised a hand to wipe the hair from his brow.

“Yes, dearest?” She wiggled in his lap, making him wince in pain at the sensation of her sliding across the evidence of his unfulfilled desire.

“Will ye marry me?” she asked quietly.

“I think I’m supposed to ask that question.” He chuckled and then kissed her forehead as he tugged her skirts back down. He’d never felt pleasure like he had just experienced with her. And that came with no more than a drop of her blood. It was her. Not her blood. Not her body. It was her. This enchanting, weather-born witch.

She was his.

He’d never thought of himself as selfish before, though he must be. It was a very good thing that he could never die, because he would surely be sentenced to hell for refusing to give her up. And he wouldn’t, couldn’t give her up after that. The fact that she seemed to need him just as badly was the only balm to his conscience.

“Well, are ye goin’ ta?” Her words broke him from his thoughts.

Matthew looked down at the pretty witch still in his arms. “Am I going to do what?”

She bit her lip as though contemplating whether or not she should say whatever was on her mind. Then she sat a little straighter. “Will ye ask me already?” She turned, burying her head in his chest in embarrassment. “Ta be yer wife,” she clarified, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

He didn’t even bother to bite back the smile that graced his lips. The fires of hell would never lap at his feet. He’d adore her all the years they had together. “Rhiannon,” he said slowly, nudging her to look at him. “Pray tell me you will be my wife.”

“Soon?” Her hazel eyes glinted up at him.

“Why the rush, dearest?” They had the rest of her life, after all. She wiggled in his lap again, letting him know she felt his desire beneath her bottom.

“Because we could make a most lovely storm together. And ye’re too honorable ta take from me without marryin’ me first… And I’m worried about ye.”

Matthew brushed his lips against hers. “No need to worry about vampyres, my beautiful witch. I’ve existed centuries and look no worse for the wear.”

She regarded him with a dubious expression.

Perhaps he looked worse than he thought. She was right, of course. The faster they were properly married, the better. “I’m not acquainted with the Archbishop. I’m not certain we’d be granted a special license.” Then there was the little matter that he hadn’t stepped foot in a church in centuries, even before the Reformation.

Rhiannon’s face fell. “I forgot we are in England. It would be so much easier if we just went ta the church and said our vows. Back home, the vicar, Mr. Crawford, wouldna be happy about another irregular ceremony, but I ken we could have convinced him ta forgo the banns. He’d bluster about it, but he’d perform the ceremony.”

When she said
soon
, he had no idea she meant today. “Three weeks isn’t so long to wait.” Not when one had lived centuries, anyway.

Her brows drew together, and she ran her soft fingers along his jaw. “Ye doona expect me ta watch ye starve while we wait for the banns, do ye? I willna do it, Matthew.”

He closed his eyes to block out her beseeching gaze. “We don’t have a choice, dearest. I’m the lowest of cads to even take you as my wife. You deserve more than I can ever give you. But I will not dishonor you by taking your innocence or anything else before we’re wed. I simply cannot.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Well, I simply willna wait three weeks. I willna watch ye suffer in pain.”

“It appears, Rhiannon,” he opened his eyes to make his point, “that we are at an impasse.”

She sat up straight and grinned as though the most brilliant idea had occurred to her. “Perhaps Lord Eynsford kens the Archbishop. I’m certain he’d help us obtain a special license.” She grinned unrepentantly at him.

If Eynsford knew what had transpired between them already, the Lycan would not only help, he’d
demand
a special license. Matthew frowned. He’d really rather not have anyone learn what had transpired between them. He wouldn’t see Rhiannon’s name tarnished, not even by those who loved her. She was so young, how could she understand… Exactly, how young was she? Matthew’s mouth went dry. “Dearest, how old are you?”