You intrigue me….
Miranda heard his deep voice in her head, felt it in her entire body, the way music would vibrate through her. She heard it and went ice-cold. Could he guess that she had special powers—a power she couldn’t even understand? That she possessed some kind of magic? She shivered. What would that mean? Would it spare her life? Was any of what he had told her true?
“Of course it is true,” he said in answer to her thoughts. “What do you think—I’m some insignificant slave who concocted a fancy tale?”
She recoiled from the sudden anger in his voice. His lower lip thrust out, in the way her brother would do when she had caught him making some foolish mistake, such as gambling.
Vampires were once mortal men. That is the critical thing to remember when hunting them. Aunt Eugenia had told her that over and over again.
She remembered her response to Aunt Eugenia: I am a gentlewoman. I am supposed to even fear the power of mortal men.
But Aunt Eugenia scoffed at that. A woman is as powerful as she believes she can be. The words had almost made Miranda laugh—she painted watercolors, diligently perfected her embroidery, strolled the gardens with a dainty parasol. How could she be powerful? But she had wanted to believe her aunt. And Eugenia’s words had a strange power attached to them. As though, by thinking them, they could give her greater strength.
Zayan stretched his arm along the back of the seat. It was such a masculine gesture—such a normal, human one—that it caught Miranda by surprise. “Does knowing who I once was make you more willing to kiss me?” he asked, amusement heightening the allure of his looks.
She fought the instinctive tug of feminine admiration at his chiseled jaw, full lips, at even the crinkles at the sides of his mirror-like eyes.
“Of course not!”
“Wise girl.” Across from them, Lukos had propped one booted foot on the velvet seat of the coach. “He’s a vampire. He’s taken the blood of thousands of innocent women and children.”
She froze, horrified.
“As have you,” Zayan growled. He was watching her, his gaze hot and intense. “I would like to know what you are. Not a normal, flighty, empty-headed woman of society, are you?”
Miranda twisted her bound hands. Her entire body tensed, but she tried to look rather stupidly at Zayan. “Of course I am just an empty-headed, ordinary woman.”
But he held her gaze, seeing through her, she was certain, with his mirror-like eyes.
She had slid along the seat to put as much space between them as she could. But he reached out and caught hold of the bindings at her wrist. With two fingers, he tore the cloth. She wrenched her arms apart, fighting at the fabric, even as he unwound it.
Oh. Her hands tingled as feeling returned.
Zayan reached for her hand. “Isn’t a kiss on the hand the way a proper English gentleman begins his seduction of a lady?”
His hand clasped hers; his fingers threaded through hers. Like a perfect gentleman, like a man she might have dreamed about, he raised her hand to his lips.
“No, don’t do this.” She could not bear a mockery of courtship before she was killed and her blood taken. “No, I know nothing of magic. I didn’t even really believe in vampires!”
Soft and full, Zayan’s lower lip touched the back of her bare hand. A jolt of warm pleasure ignited there at the brush of his mouth. He kissed her hand as no man had ever done before—a tantalizing play of mouth and tongue. She’d had no idea a kiss to her hand could make her blood rush madly through her. Could make her nipples lift against her shift.
But Lukos was not going to simply watch, she realized. He had moved to their side—he was on his knees. It startled her that a vampire, a demonic creature, would be on his knees for her. “I do not share,” he growled, looking like a defiant boy. “We could have her choose—”
“Choose!” she cried. “I’d never—”
“But we can both compel her thoughts,” Lukos continued, ignoring her outrage. “I propose a competition. An amusement for a long journey.”
The fiends were speaking as though she were not even there. And butterflies took flight in her belly at the word competition.
“No magic?” Zayan asked.
“Magic is allowed, but only for seduction, which will begin like this…”
Miranda held her breath. Lukos bent to her neck. She felt him approach. Her skin seemed to anticipate him, tingling before he touched her.
His lips brushed her, and she moaned with desire. What was wrong with her? Zayan suckled her fingers one by one, and the sensations left her dizzy. She could not fight the…the heated desire rising in her. They were competing for her, like she was a prize.
What if she touched them? What if she touched them as she did to others who had died? Could she bring them back? Could this mysterious power she possessed do that—to men who had been vampires for centuries?
Did she dare try? If she could change them, they couldn’t kill her.
The shade rattled away from the carriage window. Barely any light filtered in.
The sun had set. She had to try now. She did not have any more time, and this might be her only hope to live.
London, at that moment
“An innocent from a good family will cost you, sirrah.”
James Ryder drew out a handful of gold sovereigns and dropped them, one by one, into the greasy silk glove on the madam’s outstretched hand. “Gentlemen pay at least five hundred pounds for my virgins, sir.” She reached out to return his money.
Five hundred. He had it, but he hadn’t wanted to part with so much. There were houses where that handful of coins would buy him the use of every cunny in the house. That amount of money would let him do whatever he wanted to the girls.
But he wanted to dip his wick here. In this place that was the exclusive domain of earls and dukes. In this place where he could take the maidenhead of a woman he would not be allowed to address on the street.
Tonight, Miss Miranda Bond had evaded him. To ease his frustration, he had destroyed a vampire, and the excitement of battle now sang in his veins.
He wanted the best. And he could pay for it.
He caught the madam’s wrist. “That is a small gift for you, madam. I am willing to pay the price for quality.”
“Who are you, then, sir? You are not known to me.” She sniffed and looked down her beak of a nose at him.
How in bloody hell did she dare look down at him?
“I am a son of the Marquess of Hiltshire.” The truth, though he was a bastard son. He pulled out a wad of notes and pushed those into her hand, forcing her to drop the sovereigns on the gleaming parquet floor.
The coins clinked. Her hand squeezed around the money.
