Michael lowered his mouth and rested it against her lips. Petal soft, trembling, dry. He ran his tongue over the gentle curves, dampening them, coaxing them to open. Inside, his tongue found only wet, dark heat, and he sank into that succulent, maddening place.

"This isn't a solution," she whispered against his mouth.

He lifted his head. "Isn't it? Very well, Alexandra, you tell me what to do."

"I don't think you want me to give you instructions right now." She twisted her arms. "How is it that I can knock a street sign into next week, but I can't rip these apart?"

"You don't want to rip them." He rolled onto his side and stroked his hand over the flat, smooth skin of her belly. "You've felt it from the first day we met, didn't you? Even when I didn't have this face, and I couldn't see yours. Since then we have argued and fought and hidden from it." He skimmed his fingers up the center of her body and drew a lazy circle around one nipple. "We have pretended it was not there. Now you would run from this, from me, because I am not what you expected. What you had planned."

"No." She arched her back, an involuntary movement that thrust her swelling breast against his fingers. "You're not."

"I had a life, too, Alexandra." He plucked at her nipple and watched her shiver. "Plans, ambitions. People who depend on me to keep them safe." He touched the pulse hammering at the base of her throat. "I didn't want this, Alexandra. I didn't want you. Yet I am as bound to you as you are to this bed."

Tears glittered in her eyes as she ripped her arms free. She didn't hit him, or try to roll off the bed. "Shit." She put her arms around his neck and buried her face against his chest. "What are we going to do?"

"I don't know." He gave into one last impulse and put his hand between her legs, playing his fingers over the delicate folds, the silken heat, before resting his palm on her thigh. "I am tired, Alexandra. Tired of being understanding and patient. Tired of fighting myself and you."

"Then cut it out."

Alex realized Cyprien was right. No matter how angry she was, or how much she resented his domineering shit, there was this thing between them. Feelings as well as the physical attraction. They'd both fought it from day one, and if they didn't stop ignoring it, they were going to kill each other.

What Cyprien had said had really struck home, and made her feel about an inch tall. She wasn't the only one whose life had been turned upside down. How many times had she demanded something of him?

Too many times.

Cyprien had been generous. He'd given her the money to help Luisa recover. He had offered to find the men who had attacked her, too. He'd given her the Durands, patients she could treat without fear of infecting them. He'd provided her with a purpose when she'd had none.

And feelings. He'd given her feelings to fill the emptiness. Too many, maybe, but that's what she got for keeping them locked up inside. The damn things had multiplied on her.

Alex watched Cyprien remove the tattered fabric from around her wrists. He made no move to release her ankles.

"Should I tear those off, too?" she asked as she bent her knees and waggled them to get his attention.

"No." He cupped her neck with his hand and brought her lips forward to his.

The man could kiss. The things he did with his tongue and his teeth had her panting into his mouth, reaching down between them with her only free hand. His cock jumped when she fisted it, but she only stroked it once before gliding her hand lower and cupping his heavy scrotum, feeling it tighten in the palm of her hand.

He didn't seem to fear the vulnerable position, although he pinned her other wrist above her head. He broke off kissing her and looked into her eyes, but his remained clear as mountain lake water. "What will you do to me, chérie?"

"I'm a one-armed woman at the moment." She ripped a leg free and curled it over his thigh, created a niche. "Let's find out."

Alex palmed him, pressing his cock between her hand and her body. Cyprien thrust forward, searching, separating, but she kept her hips tilted so that he couldn't penetrate. Slowly she moved, rubbing herself over him, making him slick, feeling the rigid shaft engorge even more. She watched his eyes lose their cool and blaze molten gold on burning turquoise.

"You might come like this," she whispered against his ear. "Do you want to?"

"Only with you." His hand joined hers, used it to reposition the full, plum-shaped head until it was stroking at the top of her mons, the ridge of his cock scraping back and forth over her clit.

Alex couldn't catch the moan that fluttered out of her, couldn't control the clenching of her thighs.

"Non, non, inside you." He dragged himself over her.

Her head felt too heavy to lift, but she managed, and she looked. Cyprien was on his knees between her legs. He spread his thighs under her, creating a wedge, positioning her, cupping her hips for control. He was already there, the head half buried inside her vagina, and then he pressed in, past the spasming elliptical opening, into the brimming, aching slot of flesh, filling her to the point of actual pain.

"Michael." The burning and stretching discomfort of accommodating him she could handle. If he stopped, on the other hand, she'd kill him. "Come on."

Three-quarters in, he stopped. Only for a heartbeat. He looked into her face, gripped her hip bones, and shoved the rest of the way.

She tried to keep the breath from whooshing out of her lungs. And failed.

Michael froze, his gaze locked on where their body hair meshed. His expression was one of lust and astonishment. He dragged her arms up, cradling her hands against his chest.

Alex didn't understand what he wanted her to do, until he bent over and her hands slid up to graze his shoulders. As soon as she latched on, however, he drew back.

"Gently," he muttered, watching her face as he worked himself back inside. He was shuddering, shaking under her hands. "Gently."

He was talking to himself, not her.

It was too good. Little explosions were popping underneath every inch of her skin, and melted together in a stream of fire that raced down deep inside, fueled by the thick, gliding length slowly pumping between her legs. Alex's head fell back and she sank her nails into him. "Do it, harder, please, Michael, please—"

His fingers clamped down, lifting her higher, angling her open. He bent forward, drawing back, almost coiling, like a snake ready to strike. One of his hands left her hip, seized her hair. He made her look up at him, and then he thrust into her, hard and fast and deep.

Alex didn't climax. She detonated.

"Yes, like that." He pulled out of her with the same force he had shoved in, and then he hammered into her, their flesh slapping, sweat dripping from his face and chest onto her. "Like that, chérie, again, like that."

Riding it was impossible. Surviving it seemed improbable. The second climax made her scream, and he drank the last note from her mouth, and kissed her without stopping as he fucked her to a third.

His was building. Alex could feel it, like some unseen monster lurking under his skin, gathering and bunching in his muscles, rising and spreading until she thought she might scream again, scream from the horrendous pressure and the terrible thrill of it.

"Alexandra." He wrenched his mouth from hers and pressed her cheek to his chest. She heard his heart and his breath roaring beneath his skin, and then his voice shattered over her as he stabbed deep and held himself there as he poured into her.

Alex held him as he shuddered over and over. She ran her hand over his sweat-damp hair, and held back a moan when he pulled out of her body and rolled onto his back. She stared up at the canopy, exhausted, throbbing, and very close to turning on the tears.

No tears. No regrets. She loved him; he loved her. They'd all but said the words. They'd gotten their rocks off together. Now they could play master vampire and helpless little love slave for the rest of eternity.

No way in hell she was staying under his roof another goddamned second.

Cyprien said nothing as she got off the bed and took a robe from his closet. He didn't try to stop her when she went to her room, and cleaned up, and dressed.

Alex walked downstairs and out of the mansion.

Gelina adjusted the blindfold, which had slipped again, over Leann's eyes and put down the clothes iron she'd been using to burn Leann's breasts. Vomit, urine, and blood soaked the rug beneath the woman's still-convulsing body; it would not be long now. Ah, she was choking again.

Tenderly Gelina peeled back one side of the duct tape covering Leann's mouth and rolled her to her side. While the woman was regurgitating the last of her stomach's contents, she admired the pattern of whip marks the electric cord had left on Leann's back. The candlelight made the blood glisten like ribbons of liquid ruby, and aroused her to no end.

Gelina sighed as she idly rubbed her hand between her legs, stroking the vague itch that Leann had satisfied for only a short time. The American woman hadn't lasted very long—just three hours—but she had been stunningly responsive.

"Please." Leann had finished vomiting. "Please." It was the one word she had said for the last thirty-three minutes.

Gelina considered using the wooden handle of the broom on her again, but the last time Leann had hardly twitched, and there was a great deal of blood gushing from between her thighs now. "Are you sure you have told me everything, Ms. Pollock?"

Leann's head jerked up and down.

She had already told Gelina a great deal about her friend Alexandra and the strange information she had requested. She had even been persuaded to make a hypothetical connection between vaccinations she and Alex had been given to the antibodies that might have been present in the blood of someone from the fourteenth century. Gelina had recorded the sobbed explanations on a handheld tape recorder, and when there was something she didn't understand, she had beaten the woman until she put it into laymen's terms.

All of this had to be relayed to Stoss immediately, of course. Gelina planned to call the cardinal the minute she finished amusing herself with Leann, who was rapidly fading now. She decided to tell her what she was going to do to John and, if the cardinal gave her permission, to Alexandra, as well.