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His bright smile had an edge to it. “Yes, I’m one hundred and forty-eight years old.”
Angelica had never been very good at arithmetic. “I find it inconceivable. Yet, I believe you. After all, I’ve seen…evidence of it.” She strolled around the edge of the small round table between the two chairs, trailing her finger on it, feeling herself wanting to move toward him. Despite all of it. “Recall that I, too, have told you my deepest secret. My own burden.”
“I was—am—very flattered. You carry a great strength about you, Angelica.”
Something unfurled in her chest. He made her feel something that no one else did. Important, worthy… She said, “You awoke, you saw the picture and how did you know that this…whatever it is…had happened?”
“When I walked outside that morning, into the sunlight… after realizing I wasn’t hungry for the eggs and ham that had been served. That was the last time I’ve been in the sun. Those brief moments I spent there were agony.”
“But you look as if you belong there,” she said, the words coming out before she could stop them. So she continued. “Your skin is so golden. And warm.”
Angelica. His lips moved silently and his eyes heated to pure gold. Her heart thumped and she took a step closer, leaving the table behind. His fingers moved on the coverlet next to him.
What am I doing?
He can’t hurt you. He’s said it himself. You’ve seen the proof.
“Does it hurt?” she asked, walking closer. “I don’t wish to hurt you, my lord. But…”
“It’s no great pain…just…as if I cannot breathe. I grow weaker, the closer you come.”
She stopped, took a step back, gauging his expression. “I don’t seem to be able to stay away.” Again, the words came without her permission.
“It’s no great thing.… I find I cannot breathe around you regardless.”
This made her want to smile and cry at the same time. “If I wear this, I can come close to you, safely…but you’re hurting.”
“The pain is only too great if the plant touches me. Take care.”
Take care.
Was he giving her permission to come to him? To touch him?
The answer was clear in his eyes.
Angelica’s palms were damp, her heart raced. What am I doing? His shoulders were so wide, and the shirt damp from his hair.
His breathing shifted, lowered and became rough. But his eyes focused on her, pulled, lured…
“What of the way vampires can hypnotize?” she asked, stopping suddenly, remembering more from Granny’s stories. Was that all this was? His manipulation? Was he tricking her, just as Lucifer had tricked him? “Are you tricking me?”
Voss managed a sharp laugh. “The Fates, no.” He drew in a breath. “Yes, the thrall—my thrall—is real. And very effective. Except with you. You seem…impervious to it.”
Angelica straightened and looked at him with interest. She was perhaps five paces from him, from the bed on which he sat like a rigid soldier. The corners of his mouth were tight.
“I? Impervious?” she asked.
He made a frustrated sound. “Blast it, Angelica, if you weren’t…well, you’d likely be able to call me Voss. And you wouldn’t be wearing that damned necklet.” He looked at her hotly, and the bottom dropped out of her belly. “You wouldn’t want to. I promise you that.”
The tips of his fangs were showing now, just beneath his upper lip, and the burning in his eyes shone like red-gold flames.
“What is that on your back?” she asked again. “May I tend to it?”
Again, a short, sharp laugh. “There is naught you can do.”
She was close enough that if she reached out, she could touch his face. Or shoulder. His breathing was rough, and she realized hers had become unsteady as well.
“If I come closer—”
“Please,” he said in a soft groan. Please, his lips moved silently.
She did. Empowered by the talisman around her neck, compelled by desire and curiosity, reassured by his need, she went to him.
His shoulders trembled as she rested her hands on them, lightly, taking care that he wouldn’t be in pain. She felt him vibrating beneath her touch, and understood that he was fighting, struggling against something.
Under her palms, Voss was warm, hot even. Solid. Broad. The ends of his hair brushed the tops of her fingers and she could smell the citrus and rosemary from his bath. His shoulders rose and fell in little jagged movements.
She looked down and saw his fingers curled up into the coverlet, wrinkling and gathering it into great bunches. His shirt gapped away from his strong, golden neck and she could see down into the back of it…the heavy black tendrils of scarring there on bronze skin.
“My God,” she breathed, and without thinking, she pulled the neckcloth away, pulled aside the opening of the shirt so she could see more of it. “What is it?”
They were like little purplish-black ropes, and seemed to pulse and throb as she looked down at them. Shiny, coursing…the pain must be beyond comprehension. They grew like roots from beneath the hair he kept long at the nape, down over the right side of his back, concentrated at the shoulder but spreading like cracks in his flesh past his rib cage.
“Mark…of Luce…ifer,” he managed to say. A trickle of sweat ran down his temple, and she saw that his skin had gone shiny and damp. “Please…Angel…ica…”
She thought he meant for her to move back, to give him relief, but when she began to shift away, he made a sound of negation. No.
Her hands trembled, and she was hot and shivery all over. Something fluttered in her stomach and Angelica felt something deep inside her curling, unfurling, swelling.
Take care.
She remembered his warning, so when she leaned forward, she bent carefully, holding the necklace tight to her skin so that it wouldn’t fall against him, her other hand on his uninjured shoulder. And she lowered her lips to his.
15
AN UNFORTUNATE SLIP
Voss’s world was a war of agony and relief. When her soft lips touched his, half parted and sweet, he nearly cried out from the pleasure, then gasped against her at the sudden, searing pain that followed, driving him to take more. Oh. God.
The hyssop, small amount that it was, was so close that he could barely lift a hand, could barely uncurl his fingers from the bedding beneath him. The delicate curve of her throat was right in front of him, the V of her robe, the golden necklace, there…so close. Yet he couldn’t move to touch her. He felt his muscles slowing, becoming heavy, even as the rush of desire surged through his veins.
