Love, Creativity & Magick Read online

  “A sillier notion I have never heard of. Not only your claim of being safe with you, of you being in this room at night without me knowing it, but what does a vampire know of magick other than to steal it?” She had wanted her words to come out sharp and angry, yet her voice instead sounded soft, emotional, even shook with her need for him. It wouldn’t do.

  “I have been studying all about you and your kind for some time. Ever since I first saw you. I knew I needed something to convince you to be with the likes of me. You doubt your feelings even now.”

  “I am trying to find the fear I know I should have, but it won’t come. You promise you are not forcing that, not changing something in my thoughts?”

  “I promise, Emma. Though you don’t know me, I would not do that to you. I want you to welcome me in, call me to your body all on your own,” he said, his words expressed in an ardent manner, furthered by a breathy, deep tone.

  “So rather than some angler or rogue, you were an inventor in life?” she asked, breathless, wanting to touch him as much as she wanted to know more about him. Talk seemed safe at least for the moment.

  “Rogue, maybe a little, but not in any criminal way. But, yes, an inventor, though a failure they called me. I fear my life was ended before I could make a better name for myself. I tinker at night still, but now all I wish for is making myself a man again so I can walk in the daylight, see the sun on your beautiful skin. If only I could make a clockwork contraption that would make my heart beat again, make it pump blood through my veins so I could be warm for you. But, alas, even with your magick, it can never be. My soul, what would make me worthy of you, is gone. Maybe what I need to invent is that time machine everyone fails at so I can go back in time and be somewhere else on that fateful night my life was ended.

  “I’m still trying to make a steam-powered device that will ease the stress of the body, force relaxation through heat and vibration without making the same person nauseous or burning their skin. Ah, just misunderstood, and past the time it matters. You know what being misunderstood is like, I fear.”

  She nodded, her heart breaking for him as it pounded with excitement.

  Her small group of witches were tolerated, even with their true identities a secret, rumors as to what they were breed fear, the only reason they were even reasonably accepted. Their mothers had all managed to marry well, marry up into the aristocracy anyway, but their offspring was still it seemed, deemed unworthy nonetheless. True, it often took the aristocracy time to warm up to new blood in their lines, especially those people included by marrying up.

  Yet, the older generation of witches, her mother and her sisters, had let too much slip, enough to warrant speculations about them. Damsels in distress want your spells as much as they want to turn their heads and pretend the magick doesn’t exist. The lesson, trust was a frivolous thing in drawing rooms and ballrooms alike. Should it be so with him? He wasn’t even human anymore.

  His being an inventor, skilled or not, thrilled her as well. Emma tried not to lie to herself. She liked the new, the different, the unbelievable, especially when magick wasn’t involved, it fascinated her all the more in the mundane world. What she wouldn’t give to see some of his creations, even get to play with them, maybe even make the clockwork gears or steam-powered engines come to life at her own whim. If she asked, if she dared go; would he take her to his lair, or his house, whichever he resided within? She’d never know if she didn’t first let him in.

  Something about him felt so familiar, so right. Yet, she questioned it, questioned the premonitions, which foretold her of his coming. Were they warnings? Or, were they signs? Now that she knew what he was exactly, she could not be sure. What she couldn’t question was the way her heart was beating in her chest, like she had run up the stairs seconds ago, to the way her palms were getting clammy or the way her stomach bound into a tight knot each time she looked at him, contemplated touching him and being touched by him. Her trembling hand moved to the latch.

  “Please Emma, open your heart. You know me. You’ve felt me with you. I’ve not going to hurt you. I wish I had a way to prove that to you. I love you. I have loved you from afar for so long, only observing while you got used to my presence. You felt me, and you were safe all this time. It is the only proof or plea I have. Don’t push me away. Don’t fear me. You didn't until I got close enough to let you know what I was. Until now, you’ve wanted me too. I’m that man, vampire or not.

  “I repeat one last time, because it is all I have…If I wanted to, couldn’t I have drained you long ago? Why when I could have taken you from your carriage tonight with no one being the wiser would I wait, come to your balcony and beg to be let in?”

  When she opened the glass door, he glided in on a rush of cool night air. Despite the chill, she knew they were about to combust.

  In a few blinks, the door was shut tight, and he stood inches from her.

  “I know you want me. I want you too. Believe in it. The feelings are real. They grew inside you knowing me, feeling me from afar. I have not glamoured you in any way. I won’t hurt you. I’ve practiced control. But, now that I am so near to you, let me touch you, your beautiful powder-white skin. First I can show you what it means to become a woman. I can teach you the strength you can find in a sexual union. Then, I can teach you to harness that power, to use it to give life, to wreak havoc, whatever you want, whatever you can dream up. I can help you bring your dreams to their full potential. Then, the world is yours to do with as you may. You want revenge or you just want to have a little fun proving a social point or you want reform for a less uptight aristocracy that not only accepts you but reveres you, it shall all be yours along with the undying love of one vampire.”

  “I don’t understand how you can know so much about magick.”

  “I can’t reveal all of my secrets in one night. But, let me say that when you have every night to walk alone when people sleep, you have enough time to study what you come across. I came across grimoires, very detailed ones to study.”

  “Did you kill the witch?”

  “Would you forgive me?”

  He stepped closer, if it was possible. She could feel the coolness of him even through her clothes. He inhaled deep, closed his eyes. She felt desired, but like prey. Why then could she not find the fear to run from this man? He had not even denied having killed her kind. Never had she been so foolish, never had she so wanted a man before. True she was always attracted to the rogue, but this was beyond that. Loving this rouge could be suicidal, insane, and yet, she continued on.

  “Let me touch you. Just say yes. Valentine’s Day is shortly upon us, and I would like to be yours, to have you be mine before then. If so, a great many gifts await you, ones better than any poem upon a piece of paper, ones any day of the year you wish them to come. Without fancy words, can I just have you? The love, the lust, I feel inside me is fierce. Let me unleash it. Just say the word, Emma. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Yes,” the word came out in a rush of breath before her mind could even process all he had offered her, what it meant to agree. With one word she had unleashed this monster upon her body. Of this she was well aware, anxious and excited, rather than scared. The only thing, which truly disquieted her, was the absolute discrepancy of the matter.

  Before she could even brace herself for his next move, now that he had her permission to do whatever he wished, her clothing fell in shreds at her feet, and she stood naked before him. Looking down, lace, silk, corset, everything laid in a puddle about her feet. The puddle could not be a truer statement since her gown, though fortunately not one of her favorites, had been an aquamarine blue. Her tiny slippers were even covered by the pile of once fine linens. The beige inexpressibles in strips looked like the foam upon the sea.

  The dress had been a gift from her mother. What explanation would she have for the shape it was in now? She couldn’t worry upon it now. The cut of the thing had exposed her breasts a little more than even she had been comfortable with just h
ours ago. In this moment, they stood out proud, her nipples hard. The rush of heat through her body had her look away from his gaze down at the floor again.

  “Emma, don’t look away. You are so perfect, so beautiful.”

  Her nerve endings, every single one it felt, came alive, like they were exposed as well, making her skin throb in want of touch, the all-consuming brand of a perilous want indulged. Even with all she’d been told, at the end of her seasons still unmatched for marriage, she was an innocent. That was about to change. She welcomed being made a woman.

  Emma found herself being lifted by powerful hands before her body was draped over a chair in front of the fire. One leg he caught with his hand, making it fall toward the floor, spreading her thighs open in invitation to his whims. Wanton, she felt no anxiety, no threat of remorse. Oddly unshaken by this change of events, she laid perfectly still, perfectly exposed. Instead her body pulsed in need of this man’s, this vampire’s touch.

  As if he could read her thoughts, and what did she know of his kind really but rumors, warnings to stay away, maybe like they claimed, he could. His fingers brushed over her skin with a powerful lightness. The chill of his flesh juxtaposed with the heat coming from the flames in the fireplace. His kiss stifled her cry, but not the shudder of her limps.

  She felt his garments move over her exposed flesh one second, then the next, his lips brushed hers, a gentle caress of skin against skin as if she were a china doll he could easily break. Maybe he could. She had heard talk of their strength, beyond that of any human. With his hands braced on the chair on either side of her, his mouth traveled, a light kiss on her chin, a nibble without fangs on her neck, the draw of his tongue over the skin above her breasts. Her tight nipples rose up to meet him as she fought for breath. Never had she been so intimate with anyone, never had a person save her mother and her servants seen her undressing. Yet, in this moment, she wanted to be seen, she wanted to be tasted. His tongue circled the tight rosy buds on her breasts, sending a sensation all the way down to her most intimate place. Her sex swelled, got wet as it had many nights these past weeks when she’d gotten undressed to go to sleep. She wondered if he had watched her then.

  “No, but I was close always. You felt me wanting you, but I resisted, even being a gentleman, adverting my eyes, when I could have dared to look undetected,” he breathed out the words between kisses, sending cold air over her chest. “This is the first I have seen your lovely body, all of your flesh at once. You are breathtaking, even to one who no longer breathes.”

  “You can read my thoughts?” Finally, she felt the heat rushing over her skin, her face and chest feeling like they were being burnt.

  “Every one of them, my love. That is how I knew you were ready for me tonight. You responded mentally to everything I was put out there. You felt me, and your thoughts said yes before your mouth did. I knew you were ready for me and couldn’t wait another minute. I had to have you, make you mine, so we could begin not only our lives together, because that is what I intend to have, but our work. Don’t overanalyze how you are feeling. It is acceptable to want me back, though I fear you have only been told to fear my kind. Social conventions, you know, just like the ones you fight against. Now, relax your mind. I have more of your beautiful, delectable body to savor.”

  By the time his mouth hit her lower stomach, her mind was a swirl of undecipherable thoughts. When he kissed the small patch of hair between her thighs, her mind went blank all she knew was the wants of the flesh. Cool fingers separated her folds, making her eyes roll back into her head. She swore a clockwork watch ticked away insider her, each mechanism, each movement, creating some kind of energy making her stomach tight, rushing it to her limbs and making them tingle.

  His cool lips and tongue set off a reaction more like a steam-powered machine, all warm and vibrating, causing her skin to flush, though no longer of embarrassment, this heat was of passion. He had flipped some invisible switch she hadn’t known she had, turned her body to on, making it work, overheat even. Her treacherous flesh and bones bucked against him, moved toward his mouth rather than away. The sensations, the tightening and releasing of muscles combined with the tingling feeling all through them, made her light-headed. Emma welcomed the feelings, as lost and as out of control as they made her feel.

  Lifted again, her legs curled around his waist as his hardness slid against her wet folds. He backed her into a wall, rubbed his length against her engorged, wet flesh. Startling her with an abrupt movement, he turned his face from hers as a hiss escaped his throat. His fingers bit into her skin, but nothing she couldn’t handle, in fact it excited her more until she caught a glimpse of his face.

  His pale shin was pulled tight over his clenched jaw, his eye, from what she could see was as dark as the stormy sky, and against his blood red lip poked a sharp white fang glistening in the light from the candle. Emma waited for the fear to paralyze her, but it never came.

  “I am sorry, my dear Emma. I will not hurt you. Arousal got the better of me.”

  He turned to face her then, and she became entranced by his face, his mouth open now, his fangs fully extended.

  A moan escaped her lips. Only, when she went to cry out his name, she realized she didn’t know what his was. This man, no this vampire, his long hard staff poised to enter her, to take her virginity and she didn’t even know his name.

  “James,” he groaned. “Let me hear you say it.”

  “James,” she moaned in return.

  With that, her breath caught as he pushed into her with an urgency meshing pain with absolute pleasure. With her small screech, he grimaced, and his fangs receded. She gasped into his kiss that came next, tasting the musky scent of herself on his lips. This has to be wrong, since it feels so right. The fire at her side felt warm around her while his cold skin excited her front. In the middle of her being, the two temperatures battled, whirled about like a tempest.

  “Damnation, Emma, I’ve wanted you for so long.”

  I have wanted you too. He squeezed the cheeks of her ass, moved her against him. The rhythm of his thrusts bore the resemblance of a song. One dark. One true. One magickal. Nothing like what was played in the dance halls. With grace, as if she weighed nothing, he moved them to the bed, laid his body down over hers.

  He whispered in her ear as her core trembled around him. “A steam-powered carriage moves past your townhouse. The couple inside cut you direct this evening. Use the power boiling in your stomach direct it with your thoughts. What do you want to happen? Right now you have only to imagine it to make it so, no words, no elements, no alter. No one needs be hurt, just an inconvenience to their evening.” Thrusting into her again, a great wave of passion tightened her muscles, sent flames erupting throughout her body.

  The heat he spoke of, she gathered, toyed with until her experiment brought a bluish glow emanating from her fingertips. In her excitement, with him still buried deep within her, pulsating in time with his groans, her magick and orgasm became one. Eyes closed tight, she imagined the carriage hit by the light coming from her. In her mind, anything else on the road, anyone coming the other way, were unhurt even with the tipping of the carriage. In her mind, there were two horses coming the other way as well. She had heard them neigh. The animals stayed upright, and in their fast departure, kicked up mud onto the couple climbing out of the overturned vehicle onto the rutted road.

  A surge of power released from her, and her vampire lover growled. Her stomach coiled, released. Heat traveled through her. Pleasure in some extreme form made itself known. With his release, outside, for real, horses screeched, wood cracked and a woman screamed. Her eyes shot open to find him with a confident grin etched into his chiseled features, pleasure burning behind his dark eyes. What she’d imagined happening, had indeed happened.

  “Hell and blast!” she cried, pushing up on her arms, burying him even deeper inside of her. She let out a quiet scream of her own, her insides still convulsing, felt like they’d burst into flame again. She s
hook, tensed, released, all while he held her, spoke words of love, even congratulated her.

  He came, she thought with the possibilities of them together swirling through her mind as she came down from her industrious high.

  Chapter Two

  He’d left before the dawn, promising to return the next night. And here she sat, having faked a chill, home from the dinner party she’d been invited to, waiting for him to show at her glass doors again. No book, no needlework, and not even a spell had been able to truly hold her attentions all day. Her brain was befogged by recollections of passion. Her body ignited at the mere thought of seeing his, feeling his flesh against hers. The way his mouth had felt, cool, bringing about great warmth in her nether regions, making her wet and ready for an invasion into her body like no other. He had barely given her time to think upon the size of him, if the hard staff standing out from his body in a bed of midnight black hair would fit inside her.

  It had. Oh, it had, and it had been most delightful. If the sensations, the shudders, the tremors, the fires he brought about inside of her were any indication, no wonder so many spinsters went in to be treated for hysterics. If he didn’t show soon, she might have to sign up, or take matters into her own hands. She had heard there were ways.