Heat flushed her entire body, as she stammered. “I-I am not.”
“If you say so.”
Beth felt the bed shifting. He was moving. She braced herself for the feel of him grabbing her gown to pull it up or the feel of his hands grasping the mounds of her bare breasts. When neither happened, she tried to find herself in the darkness. She thought with a bit of confusion that Trinity might be lying next to her. Had she done something wrong? Was she supposed to do something now? Suddenly, she felt his hands warm on her bare flesh as he pulled her closer, until the mounds of her breasts were pressed into the side of his chest against his shirt. Her hand floundered above him wondering where to fall, then he clasped it and brought it to land on his chest.
Her heartbeat thudded as his hand smoothed over her lower back. “Go to sleep, Beth.” His murmur was at odds with the tautness she could feel in his body.
She was completely surprised. She knew there was more to the marriage bed. Even out on the lawn that seductive night he’d shown her naughty desirous things men and women did together. She wanted to ask him why he’d stopped. Part of her wanted to know and part of her felt as though she’d done such extraordinary things already … like lying bare-breasted in her husband’s arms. He wasn’t leaving her and that meant something.
Trinity felt each pounding of his shaft echo through his fangs and deeper. It was an urge that plucked at him incessantly as he forced his ardor to cool.
Not an easy task.
He’d wrung it to such heights and the partially naked object of his desire lay warmly against him. He measured his breathing, until he could once again breathe normally. He
would
control himself.
He had to admit he found it easier than he believed he would. However, he would continue to test himself, until he was as certain as a vampire who believed in morals could be, that he would come to Beth a mortal in conscience if not in body.
Chapter Twenty Two
A
dam leapt down off the horse without letting the mare stop. He didn’t worry about tying the animal off. He didn’t care; his only thoughts were of Beth. His poor sister.
There was no fog in the night air, but there was a breeze as he sprinted toward the front door of his step uncle’s mansion. He noticed a carriage and another horse tied up nearby. Was Lady Ariel there consoling Beth, he wondered? She should be. It lightened the burden and hurt he felt. Beth was ruined, ostracized from society. They would never allow her among their ranks again.
“Bastards,” he spat for the unforgiving standards of the wealthy. If it hadn’t been for his fellow university student, Charles Wingate, decent fellow, coming to warn him what his sister had told him was, “The topic of the
ton,
” before the night’s round of parties and balls, he wouldn’t have known of Beth’s fall into social ruin.
He’d only left Beth that afternoon and she’d been set to visit Lady Ariel, and then travel on to the train station. Easily, she could have missed the horrible gossip and social cut. Something in his gut told him otherwise. If she hadn’t, he’d travel on to catch her fall when the ladies school denied her the job.
“My God, I have to do something,” he muttered, pushing open the front door. The thing causing him agony was … what? What could he possibly do to save his sister? He had nothing. Tears burned in his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them fall. He was terrified Beth’s only choice would be to stay at their step uncle’s … with Fanton.
“By God, I will stay here too. And she’ll not stop me,” he uttered beneath his breath as he came to a halt in the foyer.
It was nighttime and the last thing he wanted was to see Fanton. Simply thinking the thought made the side of his neck throb strangely. He grasped his neck, looking upstairs at the darkness. He’d search for her without calling her name. His hand fell from the pinpricks in his neck and he started toward the staircase.
Suddenly a man’s shout startled his steps and he halted. The shout had been muffled, but still loud. What the hell? Fanton? Whom could he be shouting at? He was afraid it might be Beth and he inched his way toward Fanton’s side of the mansion. He went to the entryway into the long hallway leading to Fanton’s suite of rooms.
Yes, there was definitely an argument going on in one of the rooms. Adam took several deep breaths, gathering the courage to move closer. A crash sounded and a door flew open. He nearly tripped over his own feet running for a place to hide. The other hallway was the only place he could get to by the time two figures moved into the foyer. Adam flattened his back against the wall, trying to make the outline of his body as small as he could.
“Do you have to rip them apart, you fucking noble?”
Adam didn’t recognize the man who shouted those fateful words, but he knew the other man. Fanton!
In between their words, they were hissing at each other in strange animalistic ways that made his skin crawl. Haunting premonitions told him, if they found him, he was in deep trouble and he glanced with panicked longing down the hall, where he wanted to run. The way they were standing in the foyer, though, they would see him if he moved away from the wall.
“What I do, river scum, is none of your concern.” Fanton’s voice was snide and rolling into guttural.
“Sire, to you!” the man wearing a black vest bellowed. He had pale, but fit arms and his dark hair was slicked and tied back. The man was definitely not a nobleman.
“Look at you, calling yourself, Sire. You will never be what I am. You will
never
have what I have,” Fanton snarled.
“So you think you’re some noble vampire, you idiot? I made you and I can unmake you. You’re not going to have the Blacknalls after my carcass!”
Adam sucked in a more startled breath than all the rest. Vampire?
Oh God, he’d known
. He’d known all along that Fanton was something … horrible.
“Just stay out of my business, Cull, and don’t come back here!” Fanton shouted like a man losing an argument, who fell back on threats that he may or may not be able to back up.
“Not this time, Governor,” Cull countered. “Only a foul vampire would mangle women like you do and not even take their blood. You were a cannibal before I turned you!”
“I’m just doing what you’d like to do!” Fanton shouted. He tried to grab Cull by his vest with the intention of throwing the lowlife liar out of his mansion. “I don’t live by your rules, ever!” he snarled, slashing his claws outward toward Cull.
“Then you die,” Cull spat lunging toward him.
Fanton felt the impact like nothing he’d felt in a long time. Other vampires were stronger than he’d realized. His body gave and bashed into the door, cracking the wood.
Cull’s hands latched onto his throat and squeezed inch by inch, lifting him up the wall. “Fight with a sire is a losing fight,” Cull growled with his claws cutting the flesh on Fanton’s neck and throat.
Fanton howled gurgling sounds with his throat restricted, realizing he’d horribly miscalculated the strength difference between his brawn and Cull’s wiry body. Fanton choked, clawing at Cull’s hands trying to loosen them. “You can’t kill a nobleman,” Fanton managed to gag.
Cull’s yellowed fangs glinted off the oil light overhead. “Oh, nob, you are so wrong about that.” Cull hefted him higher. “I’ve had trouble at my doorstep three times because of you, and I told you not to tell anyone about the wolfsbane.”
“
Paid,
” Fanton gurgled with spittle flying through his fangs. It was the only word he could manage through Cull’s grip on his throat.
“Paying me for the wolfsbane doesn’t mean a damn thing when you let the secret out, you foul-blood sucker!” Cull yelled each word and each word was emphasized by pain lancing across Fanton’s throat.
Fanton tried to kick outward with desperation, hoping to connect with Cull’s body as blood red colors washed over his vision.
“I
never
should have turned you,” Cull snarled.
Fanton felt the shift and he knew Cull was lunging inward for a fatal rip of his fangs. Fanton thrashed, wrenching his entire body, then in the last second when Cull had to release his throat and his feet hit the ground he kneed Cull’s groin just as Cull’s fangs were tearing into his throat. Fanton yowled, an inhuman sound of agony at the near fatal blow. His hand clutched the shredded cartilage and tendons as he lurched to the side.
In the core of his existence, he knew he’d been within inches of immortal death. His need to survive propelled him when his knees should have buckled and his body should have slammed onto the floor. He staggered with the instincts to hide, to escape. Through the tearing pain, he heard Cull groan, and then cuss.
No, fuck, no.
Cull was reviving. Fanton hit a wall, bounced off it, and stumbled forward. He nearly fell, was falling, but his free hand not holding his torn throat latched onto a doorknob.
He turned and he pushed, but something slammed into him from behind. “I’ll tear you to bloody pieces like you do those whores!”
Fanton expected to feel the floor. Instead he fell into something solid that gave with a resounding crack. Furniture? He flung out both his hands, even the one holding the pieces of his throat together, while he turned, lashing out with his claws. He hit bone and flesh, hearing ripe grunts of impact expel from Cull’s throat.
He knew this
. From his experience mangling bodies. The drive of that sadistic passion infused him and he tore again, hitting. Cull howled, screamed. Fanton pushed away from whatever broken furniture he was on and he wiped his eyes, finally seeing blurry visions. Cull on his knees clutching his torn stomach.
He wanted more.
More ripping and tearing, he was the master at it. He started forward and stumbled sideways. The headiness of having a kill so close fled with weakness and pain. He groaned, blood bubbled from his torn throat and he realized he was still close to his own end.
Adam clutched the sides of the bookcase he tried to hide alongside as his frantic gaze leaped from one animal to the next. They were animals! He’d never seen men fight like the two vampires did. They seemed to have superhuman strength. And, he’d made a horrible miscalculation sprinting into this room to hide. To further his very bad situation he’d not made it to the patio doors before the two abominations had crashed into the room.
Fear as he’d never felt before clogged his throat as he saw Fanton with the side of his neck ripped open but still able to move. Any man with such an affliction should be dead on the floor. As far as Adam tried to cringe back and hide, it was impossible. He would be seen, if either lethal monster looked up.
His eyes leapt to the patio doors trying to decide if he should try for it, while the monsters’ attentions were clouded by their battle. There was no hope really and he knew it. He knew he had to try. Even as terrified as he was, he prayed Beth wasn’t inside the mansion and he pushed away from the bookcase, sprinting to the windowed doors leading out onto a private patio. His hands closed around the knobs with his heartbeat straining.
“Adam!”
“No!” he screamed, looking back at the slashes of Fanton’s glowing red eyes. His hands fumbled with the knobs.
No, no, no.
He pushed.
Freedom.
Then, he saw the impossible … it was Fanton’s body flying across the room with an inhuman leap.
“No!” Adam yelled.
Fanton’s body slammed into him, carrying them through the windows of the door he’d not gotten quite open. Blackness snapped over his vision as the impact took the air from his lungs. The next thing he knew was excruciating pain and heaving breath as instinct had him punching and trying to shove Fanton from on top of him. Terror came when he knew it was impossible to halt. He screamed, begging, “No! Fanton! No!”
Fangs like razors lunged for his neck and he felt slicing pain. It hurt so badly tears poured from his eyes as he shoved against Fanton’s chest. He bucked his body trying to break free, but Fanton’s strength held him as his breath gurgled.
What he thought was pain was nothing compared to the agony that came next. He screeched sounds that wouldn’t fully come from his throat as his limbs thrashed. Pain ripped through every part of his body, as he stiffened, held suspended and he felt his life being sucked out. Each draw Fanton took surged agony through his veins, until his body fell limp and blackness clouded his vision.
What seemed like hours later, he could hear the slowing thud of his heartbeat one after the other as though his chest were a hollow case. Fanton was gone … and his foul, evil stepbrother had taken the essence of his life. His breath rasped, barely gaining any air, and he thought of blood. The dark red, thick liquid, its coppery smell and the way it clung to everything it touched.
Blood was rich with life and for some reason he wanted blood. He craved blood and the hunger for it grew stronger with each shallow breath he took. The need started clawing through him.
He needed blood.
He had to
have
blood. It was pain, tearing and slicing through him, and his body convulsed with ravenous lust for blood pouring agony from his pores.
He had no air left to say the word that would relieve his torment as his need for blood pushed him beyond his own breath. He whimpered, shoving his body over to claw forward inch by inch. With each move weaker than the last, until he tried, but couldn’t draw another inch forward. He was nearly dead and his breath rattled his demise. His tongue fell out of his mouth with the tip sliding on the stones, no longer propelled by his lifeless body.
A single, dying thought of blood coating his tongue, snapped like a pistol shot through his body.
Chapter Twenty Three
B
eth moaned, caught in a nightmare. One about horrible death and she was terrified, with tears burning her eyes.
“Beth.”
“Help me,” she cried, praying Trinity would come.
“Beth. Sweet. Wake up!”
“Help, help,” she panted, and then her eyelids lifted. “Trinity? Oh!” He was above her and she grabbed him, embracing her arms around his neck, hugging him with the dredges of desperation she could feel from the nightmare. She buried her face into his thick hair smelling of the moors.