hair. He dropped a crossbow on the floor, followed by a sharpened wooden stake. He lifted a heavy silver cross from around his neck, let the chain pool on the floor and the cross fall with a clunk.
As dark as Swift was fair, his lordship gave a courtly bow and doffed his hat. Thick, glossy, and dark brown, his hair tumbled over his brow. Her breath caught at the heat in his eyes—the deep, delicious color of chocolate.
Serena crooked her finger and both men came to her, tugging their cravats loose as they prowled to her bed. They tore at their waistcoats, their shirts, and stripped to the waist. She could barely breathe as she drank in the sight of two wide chests. Swift’s skin was bronzed to a scandalous shade, which brought the gold curls on his sculpted muscles into stark relief. The earl was massive, possessing a barrel chest and biceps as big as her thighs. He looked like a giant, one with a body honed by battle with the strongest creatures on earth.
She was dreaming. Even lost in it, she knew somehow. And in this dream, Serena had no idea what to say—what did one say when two men came to one’s bed for the first time? Words seemed inane. She was most terribly shy. And as a governess, she’d been well trained to be a silent servant. But she gave a welcoming moan—the prettiest, most feminine one she could muster.
Tension ratcheted in her. Desire flared as the men approached. They would touch her. Her heart tightened with each long, slow step they took. Yes. Yes!
Laudanum. Even here, in her dream, she remembered the laudanum. A few swallows in her cup of tea because she couldn’t sleep.
Mr. Swift paused to yank off his trousers, and he flung them aside as he stalked toward her, his ridged abdomen rippling. He wore no small clothes. His magnificent legs were formed of powerful muscle, lean and hard.
And his cock. Serena couldn’t look away. It curved toward his navel, thick and erect and surrounded by white-blond curls. She knew it would fill her completely, stretch her impossibly, and she knew it would be perfect inside.
Mr. Swift reached the bed first. He smiled, his teeth a white gleam in the darkened room. His hand reached—she followed the arc of his fingers with breath held—and he touched her bare leg. Oh!
“Miss Lark.” He dropped to one knee. “Let us dispense with the pleasantries and begin with the delights.” And with that he parted her thighs and dove to her wet cunny.
Candlelight played over his broad, tanned shoulders and the large muscles of his arms. His tongue snaked out, slicked over her, and Serena arched her head back to scream to the ceiling.
So good!
Boot soles sharply rapped on the floor. Leather-clad knuckles gently brushed her cheek. Lord Sommersby. She flicked her eyelids open as Mr. Swift splayed his hands over her bottom, lifted her to his face, and slid his tongue as he tasted her intimate honey.
Lord Sommersby looked so serious, but he never smiled. He required encouragement so she held out her hand to him, but her smile vanished in a cry of shock and delight as Mr. Swift nudged her thighs wider, until her muscles tugged, and feasted on her. His lips touched her clit, the lightest brush, and pleasure arced through her. She tore the sheets with her fisted hands, heard silken seams rip.
Then squealed in frustration as Lord Sommersby lay his strong hand on his partner’s shoulder and wrenched Drake Swift from his work.
“She is a woman beyond your ken, Swift. A woman to be both pleasured and treasured.”
Pleasured and treasured. Serena could not believe she’d heard those words from the cool, autocratic Earl of Sommersby’s lips. He thoroughly disapproved of everything about her, didn’t he?
And then the earl was gloriously nude. The hair on his chest was lush and dark, and the curls arrowed down his stomach into a thick, black nest between his thighs. His cock was straight and hard and remarkably fat, and it pointed downward, as though too heavy to stand upright.
A sweep of his lordship’s arm and his rich purple mask flew aside, revealing dark brown eyes, narrowed with lust, and a predatory determination in his expression that made his fine features harsh. “Out of my way, Swift.”
“I think the lady wants me to finish, Sommersby.” With an insolent grin, Swift rolled back onto his lean stomach and lowered to her sex once more. She lost all her breath in a whoosh.
To have two such beautiful, naked men argue over which would lick her to ecstasy…
It was almost too much to bear.
Lord Sommersby bent and licked her nipples. Of course this was a dream, for she lifted her breasts saucily to the earl and spread her legs wider for Mr. Swift. His lordship sucked her nipple at the exact instant devilish Mr. Swift slid fingers in her cunny and—dear heaven—her rump.
Her heart pounded; her nerves were as taut as a harp’s strings. “I will let you bed me,” she gasped, “if you let me hunt with you.”
Drake Swift laughed, and thrust two fingers in her quim and ass. “You were made for this, lass. For naughty fucking. Not for hunting vampires.”
How illicit and wonderful it was to be filled, to feel invaded with each thrust of his fingers. Serena looked to Lord Sommersby.
“I would never risk your life,” he said.
“But you know it is what I want most of all,” she whispered.
“Is it?” Drake gave a roguish wink that set her heart spiraling in her chest.
In the blink of her dreaming imagination, both men were kneeling on the bed at her sides, looking down on her, their smiles hot and wild.
Mr. Swift’s cock approached her mouth from the right, his lordship’s from the left. The two huge, engorged heads met in the middle, touching right over her mouth.
Serena had never seen anything so erotic—so wildly arousing that she forgot about decorum, about bargaining, about hunting vampires.
What would if feel like to run her tongue around and between the two heads?
Their fluid was leaking together, making them deliciously wet and shiny—
What on earth was she doing? This was scandalous!
Her mouth opened to protest.
They moved to push their cocks in, parrying for position. Serena lost herself to the moment, shut her eyes, and stuck out her tongue—
Something sharp pricked her tongue. She pulled back, shocked by the pain, as thick liquid spilled into her mouth. Hot, with a strange yet impossibly familiar metallic taste.
Blood.
Icy horror snaked through her veins, and she forced her eyes open.
The men were gone. They’d vanished and a young girl sat on the bed in front of her. A child dressed in a fragile white nightdress with loose, tangled, golden hair.
Anne Bridgewater. Little Anne, who had died young—she remembered holding Anne’s cold hand, laying her face to the girl’s quiet chest…
As though floating over the scene, she saw herself twine the blond hair around her wrist to expose Anne’s slim neck. Anne cocked
