“No, don’t be sorry.” She kissed him, crushing his mouth under hers. “You’re safe.” She held him to her, caressing his hair, weak with longing as he kissed her throat. “I need you to be safe.” He pressed her to the cold stone wall, his hips pushed hard against her, and she slid down his body, her legs still twined around his. “I need you.” She dragged up her own skirt, melting as his mouth found hers.
“I need you.” He sounded just as desperate as she felt, and his hands moved over her feverishly, brutal and tender at once as he reached under her skirt. He crushed her hard against his wall, his sex against her stomach, then grinding lower as he lifted her up again, and a hot wave of desire tore through her like lightning, making her gasp as they kissed. His hands slid under her behind, holding her easily, and she laughed, caressing his neck, kissing under his hair. He was strong; he could hold her forever. He could keep her safe.
She kissed his eyelids, his brow, nuzzled his cheek as his mouth found her throat and moved lower still, bathing her skin with his tongue. His hand stroked her flesh, her inner thigh, then higher, and she writhed against his touch, her breath coming faster. “I want you,” she said, bending her head to his shoulder, sweet waves of bliss radiating through her as his touch pressed deeper. Her breasts felt swollen and deliciously tender as he kissed them through her gown, suckling her nipples through the cloth, first one and then the other. “I want you inside me.”
His hand opened her sex, rough with desire, and she moaned against his shoulder, stifling a scream. Then suddenly his hand was on her cheek and it was his sex filling her up, a single, breathless stroke that seemed to touch her very soul. She laughed, dizzy with pure, sweet joy, and he moved, a steady, brutal rhythm like the beating of her heart. “Angel,” he murmured, hoarse with desire. “Isabel…” Her hips rose to meet him, matching her rhythm to his, and he shifted her closer, thrusting in deeper, making her cry out.
“Yes…” She was crying, and he cradled her close, kissing her cheek, their bodies still moving as one. “Simon, please don’t stop.”
“Never.” His kiss moved to her throat, turning cruel, a bite, and she cried out again in pleasure, not pain. A different kind of ecstasy rushed through her, making her swoon in his arms as her climax rose and fell and rose again. She was dying, surely, but she didn’t care, not if he was with her, not if he would never let her go.
Simon had not meant to bite her, but he couldn’t stop. His demon’s fangs were tearing her flesh; her blood was on his tongue, and the pleasure was like nothing he had ever felt before. Her body embraced him as he fed, pliant and burning with life, her soul in his mouth, liquid fire like he had drunk so many times before. But this was no stranger, no meaningless prey; this was Isabel, his love. Tearing his mouth from her throat, he passed his tongue over the wound, a final thrill of taste as his demon’s magic hid the mark. She sighed in his arms as if she felt the loss as deeply as he did himself, the loss of this demon’s kiss. He kissed her mouth instead, adoring and breathless, and his body shuddered, spilling into hers.
“Simon,” she murmured, caressing his face with her hands as she brushed her mouth across his cheek and lips. He wrapped his arms around her, molding her body to his as he carried her to the bed, crushing her beneath him as they fell. But he couldn’t stay; the dawn was coming. He could not let himself sleep in her arms. He felt tears rising in his eyes, tears of her blood he could not let her see.
“Simon?” He was getting up, she realized in shock; he was leaving her again. “Simon, no.” She sat up, reaching for him. “Stay here. Stay with me.”
“I can’t.” He sounded tearful, but his face was turned away. “The dawn will be here soon—”
“So let it come.” She turned his face to hers. “My love, I swear it isn’t real.” She kissed his cheek, her heart aching with love. “This curse isn’t real.”
He gathered her close for a moment, hiding his face over her shoulder. “I wish it were not.” He kissed her hair, fighting back tears. “I so very much wish it were not.”
He was holding her so hard he hurt her, but she could still feel him pulling away, retreating into the pain that shut her out. “Tell me, Simon,” she ordered as he kissed her cheek. “Tell me what Orlando has told you; why has he said you are cursed?”
“Orlando?” He drew back. “No, darling, it isn’t Orlando—”
“Then what?” He turned away. “Simon, stop. What do you want me to do?” If he said to stay away from him, she would murder him on the spot, she thought. “Do you mean for me to keep you as a plaything forever, my lover I keep in the cellar?” she joked, touching his shoulder.
“No,” he promised, turning back to her with a bitter smile.
“Do you mean to leave me then?” Her face flushed hot, her pride long ignored but not forgotten. “Am I the plaything instead?”
“No.” He knelt on the floor before her and took her hands in his. “I would marry you, beloved, if I could.”
“Then do it.” She thought she must be going mad; joy and grief were so entwined inside her heart they seemed to be the same. “Ask me to be your wife.”
“I can’t.” He kissed each of her palms. “I know you think… but you’re wrong.” He looked up at her. “When this curse is broken, I am yours.”
“When this curse is broken.” She looked away, her hands limp and still in his grip. “Will that ever be?”
How could he answer her? he thought. For ten years he had searched for salvation and not found it; how could he promise her that he would find it now? “I don’t know.” He rose to his feet. “I—”
“Don’t.” She looked up at him. “Please, don’t tell me you’re sorry.”
He smiled, but it was not with joy. “I will not.” He bent and kissed her forehead. “Sleep well, love.”
“You, too.” She watched him go, needing all the will she had to stop herself from running after him. When this curse is broken, I am yours, he had promised. Then broken it would be.
10
Simon found Orlando snoring on the ground near the bodies, his lantern long burned out. He examined the corpses himself, but apparently none of them had so much as twitched all night. These three were well and truly dead, their souls dispatched for heaven or hell as suited God, not evil. Simon rather envied them. He thought again of Isabel’s face when she asked him if his curse would ever be broken and the coward’s answer that was all he had to give. All his fine promises to the contrary, he had broken her heart.
The sky was growing lighter. A line of dawning purple traced the castle wall and glowed on the surface of the lake. The sun would kill him; this was one of the great, unchanging truths of his vampire life. To kill in darkness was to live; to stand in the light was to die. But how did it happen? Orlando had described undead bodies bursting into flames, consumed into ashes in a moment, but how would that feel? Would his consciousness pass into hell in an instant, becoming a demon indeed, or would his soul move on to judgment as if he were a man? Orlando had no answer for such a question; he did not think of hell or paradise as Simon did, did not believe in the same God. And Simon’s own theology was not equal to the task. The priest in his home village had never heard tell of a vampire.
The first pale rays of sunlight pierced the trees along the lake shore, reaching for the shadow of the castle where he stood. He felt a prickle on his skin similar to the sensation he would feel walking into a church, only stronger, reaching deeper through his flesh to the bone. In a moment, he would explode into hellfire, every cursed particle that made him transformed at the same instant into flame. He waited, entranced, as still as the corpses lying dead before him, watching as the sunlight crawled across the ground, moving ever closer to his feet.
“Simon!” Orlando rushed at him, flinging all his weight against him to push him to the open cellar door. They plunged together through the opening and fell backward down the stairs as sunlight swept over the wall. Smoke rose from Simon’s clothes and boots as the wizard scrambled back up the steps to the door, climbing like a beetle on his hands and knees as Simon felt the burning rising up inside him, pain like nothing he could have imagined. A scream formed deep inside his mind that his throat was too far lost to voice, drowning out every thought of guilt or truth or salvation. Then Orlando slammed the door, and the burning stopped.