Читать книгу Seducing the Vampire - Michele Hauf - Страница 7

Paris, 1785

NEVER HAD TERROR LOOKED LOVELIER.

Blood oozed from the punctures in her neck. The choker’s honed iron points penetrated pale, powdered flesh, piercing muscle and even bone.

Thick crimson blood purled down the curve of clavicle, detoured across alabaster shoulder, and then plunged toward the voluptuous breasts imprisoned behind silk damask and lace.

Kohl drawn around blue eyes emphasized her horror. Yet the plump lips—carmine rouge caressing the pouting lowest lip—did not gape in pain.

The witch’s spell had frozen her for time unending.

He stepped away from her and unhooked the bone crown from around his wrist. Tapping the circlet of rat skulls against his palm, he took it all in.

Imposed in stillness, she yet possessed the incredible and annihilating ability to seduce. Always she had bewitched, ever aware that her carefully crafted appearance, her practiced movements, her well-thought words could render all men gibbering fools.

He lifted a hand to stroke the enticing curve of her bosom, but cautioned that connection.

It had come to this. Even as her blood scent filled the air and curled beneath his nostrils, he could not force himself to lean forward. To smell her wine-lush skin. To breathe in her life. To overdose on her terror.

He needn’t, for the heady mixture of her essence surrounded him in an exquisite caress. For the first time, he suspected, she feared. And he had been the master of that rare condition.

If only he could have mastered her in body and blood.

Holding the crown before him, high enough so that her fixed stare could sight the object, he rattled it. Dozens of rat skulls strung about a leather cord. New white bone, stripped of flesh, fur and muscle, still reeked of rodent blood and the sewers beneath the city.

The sewers? Ah yes, a most clever notion.

Placing the crown upon her black hair, always scented with summer wine, he pressed until it sat firmly and would not slip off.

“I crown you—” the wicked edge in his voice cut his tongue—or maybe it was his fangs “—Queen of the Rats.”

She did not scream. Rather, she likely could and was at this moment. Silently. Ragingly. The spell had immobilized her entire body.

Cursed to become a living Pandora doll, frozen on the outside, alive and stunningly aware on the inside, she could now but accept punishment for her wicked, devious ways.

“You had your chance,” he whispered, allowing admiration to soften his tone. “And now I condemn you to eternity.”