Then he turned it around so that Giordan could see the other side.
It was lined with brown feathers. Rows and rows of them.
“No,” he whispered, turning to Moldavi in shock. “No, by hell.”
“Now, then,” he said. “Are you ready to negotiate?”
“Negotiate?” Giordan said. The numbness had eased away to cold fear and impotent anger. “You seem to hold all the cards.”
Moldavi liked that, and he laughed with delight. “I do hold most of them, that’s true. I spend much of my time arranging things.”
“I want Narcise,” Giordan said, his lungs aching, his knees watery. “Name your price. Whatever it takes to get her out of here.”
Moldavi showed his fangs, a light dancing in his malevolent eyes. “I want you.”
Even though he’d expected it, Giordan couldn’t control the sharp, dark twist in his middle. “Be more specific,” he managed to say.
“Three days and three nights. Naked. Willing.” Moldavi’s smile couldn’t even be described as maniacal; it was too calm and controlled. Satisfied. “Is that specific enough?”
~ II ~
Liberty
10
March 1804
Every so often, the memory came hurtling back into Narcise’s mind.
Although it was more than ten years since Giordan Cale had destroyed her, every nuance of the moment, every sight, sound, color, scent…even the remembrance of the way her being simply stopped and then imploded…it all came back.
As if it were happening again.
Anything could trigger it: the sight of a piece of charcoal on her drawing table. The sound when her maid dropped a handful of hairpins that scattered on the floor. The glimpse of a head of brown curls. The scent of a peach.
Whatever it was would send her mind shooting back to that moment when she walked into Cezar’s private chambers.
Even now, her belly shuddered, threatening to send her last meal spewing forth, but try as she might, Narcise couldn’t keep herself from going back there, reliving the very minutiae of a time she’d kill to forget.
She’d been looking for her brother—something she generally avoided doing, but there was no help for it, for she hadn’t had a fencing lesson or a painting session for three weeks, including a false one with Giordan Cale—and she wanted to find out if and why he’d canceled the meetings with her tutors.
Cezar had been unusually absent since the night he’d brought her back after she seduced Cale, and Narcise had welcomed the reprieve, knowing how difficult it would be to hide her feelings about Cale in front of her brother. Fortunately Cezar had been in a relatively fine humor and had actually released most of the children he’d had captive. Perhaps that should have been a warning sign to Narcise, but at the time, she was merely grateful those lives had been spared.
She’d also expected to hear from or to see Giordan himself…but three weeks had passed since she seduced him, and she’d seen and heard from no one. Including Monsieur David and her fencing instructor. But it was Giordan’s absence, of course, that tortured her the most.
And that had her active mind making up scenarios and explanations—none of which were pleasant in the least. The worst of them all was the image of him with another woman, or women, perhaps…being the jovial, sensual host she knew him to be…and providing all form of hospitality.
Or perhaps now that she’d actually seduced him, that they’d actually been together, he’d moved on to another conquest. That was the Dracule way. Her heart grew cold at the thought.
Had she trusted him only to be betrayed and set aside?
At last, after neither David nor Cale appeared for her lesson for the third week, she went in search of Cezar, noting vaguely that all of the servants seemed to be otherwise occupied. His private parlor, where he kept the dish of sparrow feathers, was empty, but…
She stepped just inside the door, despite the deterrent of the feathers. She smelled him. Giordan. Giordan had been here recently.
The flush of a thrill warmed her and her heart began to pound with hope. She had no doubt, no doubt at all that Giordan would find a way to free her from Cezar. He’d been here, recently, very recently. Earlier today.
It was at that moment that two things happened: the first—and now, much later, she understood the significance—was that the ever-present tray with feathers was not in the chamber. The second was that she noticed that, across the parlor, the door to Cezar’s private bedchamber was slightly open. And there were sounds and scents coming from inside…heavy, erotic, strong scents.
Even now, in her mind, her memory of it, Narcise screamed at herself don’t go over there…
But she did. Whether she realized what it was, whether it was the scent on the air, permeating the chamber, or whether there was some other reason she was compelled to walk on silent feet over to the chamber door…
To peer around the crack and to look in…no, no, noooooo, don’t…but she does it again…she looks in…
At first, she doesn’t realize what she sees. It’s the scent of arousal…heavy and thick…of lifeblood and eroticism and man…. It catches her, giving that little tug in the center of her belly that spears down low and causes desire….
The chamber is lit well enough by the blazing fire that Cezar always keeps, and several lamps, turned up to a golden glow. There is a massive bed, its curtains pulled wide, to one side. A large divan and two chairs are arranged in front of the fire. A table covered with glasses and bottles sits next to it, and even from here, she can see that three of the four bottles are empty. The scent of whiskey and blood mingle strongly with musk and virility.
There are two people, not on the bed, but on the divan, directly in front of the raging fire, opposite the door around which she peers. Since her brother’s varied proclivities aren’t unknown to her, she’s not surprised to see that he’s with a man.
She can’t see well, she’s not even certain why she’s compelled to watch—perhaps the scent hooked into her mind and dragged her there—but the first glimpse of a pale, slender hand curling over a strong, sleek shoulder makes her breath seize.
There is a cast of amber light over his skin, over the familiar golden curve of arms and shoulders now marred with bitemarks, shadowed by the flickering fire…the golden brush of lamplight over the strong profile with the patrician nose, so handsome, so perfect…the glow creating a nimbus from behind thick, dark curls, and an unholy halo around an even darker head adjacent to his.
She can’t breathe. The floor is falling away from her feet as if she is standing on a house of cards, and her body ceases. Everything halts: breath, heart, sensation, emotion.
His rich, tawny skin is slick with perspiration, shadowed from the hands on him…his face half turned from the door, etched tight with pleasure and pain. His lips, drawn back from his mouth in some sort of groan or grimace as fangs drive into his shoulder…
For all of the details of that moment, Narcise remembered hardly anything of what happened afterward. She must have made her way from the chamber, she must not have screamed despite the shrieking and wailing inside her, stumbling from the private parlor, somehow back to her own room before her body began to feel again.
Shattered.
And then, after that, it was dull and empty.