Blade cried out, his fingers stilling within her. His breath stirred against her neck and then he bit her, his fingers tearing free of her body to dig into her thigh and drag her close. The sharp pain of his teeth made her eyes spring open.

It was long seconds before he collapsed against her, breathing hard. Her racing heart matched his. In the wake of the aftermath, strange thoughts suddenly started swarming over her. Good God. His fingers. Inside her. Bared to the day, her thighs slick and wet with her own pleasure.

“Don’t think.” The words were a raw sob wrung from his throat. How did he know what was going through her mind?

He tugged her skirts down a bit, fighting with the material, even as he buried his face against her throat. With every second a little of the pleasure faded, her senses coming back to her. What had she done? What had they done?

The violence of the outburst shocked her. I let him touch me. I let him taste me. And sweet lord, I loved every second of it. This was not the dry, dispassionate sex she had read about in books. This was a whirlwind of need and desire that swept away everything in its path.

She could feel her pins tumbling free in her hair. Her stocking loose and discarded around her ankle, much like her morals. The crumpled weight of her skirts, baring her legs to the world.

And Blade, a living, breathing weight. Collapsed against her, even now stirring her body to new wants.

Something burned within her. Some vague sense of dissatisfaction. I want more. A shocking thought. Five minutes it had taken, from respectable ignorance to aching, disheveled wantonness. Blade was far more dangerous than she had ever suspected.

“I think…I think you should let me go.”

He wrenched his head off the pillow. Glowered at her. “Tol’ you not to think.” A flush of color lit his cheeks, and his mouth was swollen.

Don’t look at it. She jerked her face away. The wetness between her thighs was an uncomfortable reminder of what had happened. She could smell her own musk, flavoring the air.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I ne’er meant to do that.”

He was blaming himself. A little part of her might have been tempted to allow it, but she forced it down and turned her head back to look at him.

“I asked you to,” she said.

His eyes widened.

“But it mustn’t happen again.”

They narrowed. “No,” he argued.

“It mustn’t happen,” she insisted firmly. “Or I’ll break our bargain. I can’t…” A shiver went through her. “It’s too much for me.” It made her long for more. Even now her body throbbed restlessly.

How long before she begged him for more? Just the thought of losing herself in that whirlwind of need terrified her. Pleasure so intense she might do anything for it. Throw away all of her morals, beg him to take her. Lose herself in him. Lose her heart. No. It was too dangerous. She had too much to worry about. Charlie, Lena, Vickers’s manhunt. Doctor Madison’s dwindling month of relief before he reported Charlie’s illness to the authorities. It didn’t matter how much she wanted to curl into Blade’s arms and wrap them around her. It was only selfish need. I just want something for myself.

Anger burned suddenly. Damn Lena. Damn Charlie. And most of all, damn her father. Hot on the heels of that emotion came wretched guilt. I don’t mean it. I just want…What?

Blade waited, the silence dangerous.

“I can’t do this. Please untie me,” she said.

“Honor.”

“Please,” she repeated in a small voice. “I have to get home. My brother wasn’t feeling well this morning. Would you fetch my diaries?”

Frustration danced across his face, but he reached for the manacles. A swift turn of the key and she was free, rubbing at her wrists. Sitting up, she tried to push her skirts down to a more modest length, but her head spun.

“Easy.” Blade caught her against his shoulder. “You’d be best off lyin’ still for a moment. That’s why I prefer the bed.”

“You do this with all of your thralls?” She pressed a hand to her temples as her vision blurred. His body was hard and solid against her. Some part of her longed to rest her cheek on his shoulder and curl into him. Let him shoulder her troubles. She quashed the desire ruthlessly.

“Not all of it. I don’t usually confuse sex with blood thirst.”

“How lucky for me.”

“Mind you, most o’ me thralls don’t react the way you do,” he growled, sliding off the bed with devilish grace. He looked as though he’d quite recovered his equilibrium.

“How long must I wait?” she asked. “I need to get home.”

“I’ll fetch your diaries. Then we’ll see ’ow steady you are on your feet. Will’ll walk you ’ome.”

“Will will love that,” she said sarcastically. Then she saw Blade’s face. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”

He shrugged. “’E’s only protectin’ me. It’s the nature o’ the verwulfen to guard their families from threat.”

A curious insight. All of the men, and Esme, of course, were family to him. She felt a jolt of keen longing, swiftly quashed. Blade had his little family and she had hers. In a blinding moment of clarity, she realized that perhaps he would understand what she was trying to do.

And yet…she didn’t have the courage to open her mouth and ask him for help. For what if he didn’t understand? And what if he lost control of his inner demons—the way he had at times—and killed her brother?

“Honor?” He watched the emotion play over her face.

“I’ll wait then. Until Will thinks I can manage,” she said softly. Coward.

Blade stared at her a moment longer, as though waiting for her to say more. Then his gaze shuttered. “Aye. So be it.”

Chapter 17

Blade leaned against the doorjamb. Esme hadn’t heard him. She was folding pastry, sinking her knuckles into the wet dough and humming under her breath.

“Enjoyin’ yourself?”

She started, slapping a pastry-covered hand to her chest. “My goodness, Blade. You could have given me some warning.” As she raked an eye over him, a faint smile touched her lips. “You’ve fed. The question, I suppose, is did you enjoy yourself?”

Far too much. “I ’ad to. She disarmed me with some bloody poison she’s got.”

Esme’s jaw dropped, then snapped shut. “You were careful with her?”

“Careful as kittens.” He dragged a hand over his face, his stubble scratching his palm. It had cost him. He was still hungry, but for flesh now. The sweet taste of her blood had barely sated him. He could still taste it on his lips, and the scent of her arousal clung to him, a torture of its own.

Bloody hell. He knew what a feeding could do to some people. But Honoria had been almost clawing the sheets, her back arched and her h*ps thrusting. How the hell had he restrained himself?

Because you want her to trust you. He rubbed at his chest with another scowl. It was important to him, important enough to drag himself back from the edge when he knew he could have taken her…And destroyed her trust in him forever.

“You look thoughtful.” Esme started kneading the dough again. “What’s going through your mind, Blade?”

He slung a hip against the bench. Esme was possibly the only person who could ask that question and get an answer. “I nearly took ’er.”

“Aye. But you obviously didn’t. What stopped you?”

“I don’t know. I’m tryin’ to be patient. To win ’er over. Sometimes I doubt if she’ll ever yield.”

Esme scraped the pastry off her hands then wiped them on a cloth. She turned and slipped her arms around him. “She affects you, doesn’t she?”

He looked into her serene face. “The ’unger’s worse. With ’er. Even though I’ve just drank, it still wants. I’m afraid I’m goin’ to lose control of it.”

“You obviously managed to rein it in.”

“This time.” And his CV levels were only rising.

Esme pressed a kiss against his forehead. “Don’t doubt yourself. You’re a good man, Blade. I know how strong you are. And you’ll have to wait a month before you take from her again. Perhaps in that time she’ll have grown used to you.”

“Maybe.” If he could last the month without demanding more. He’d never before been tempted to break his own rule. “She wants ’er diaries back.”

A guilty flush crept over Esme’s cheeks. “I see. You figured it out.”

“Well, it weren’t Rip or Will readin’ The Tamin’ o’ the Shrew.”

Esme pushed away from him, leaving a heady cloud of her floral scent behind. “They’re coded.”

“You tried to read ’em?”

She reached up to the flour container and tugged it down, then pulled a pair of worn-looking diaries out of it. “I was curious to see if she’d mentioned you at all.”

The leather of the spines was soft and creased when he took them. He scratched a nail over the gold lettering on the larger one. Why were they so important to her? Why risk her life—her freedom—just to fetch them from Vickers’s Institute?

His hands tightened on the leather. Honoria. Cool, rational, guarded. An impenetrable tower he couldn’t storm. At first the challenge had stirred his interest, but lately he’d begun to find it only frustrated him.

He wanted her to trust him. To share her secrets with him. He found himself curious, wanting to know more about who she was beneath the composed facade. Let me in, damn you.

He was lucky she’d believed him when he said he hadn’t taken the diaries. That could have been one step back in the cautious dance they shared.

“Don’t interfere again,” he said, pushing off from the bench. “I mean it. Or I’ll start interferin’.”

Esme’s gaze shot to his. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

“Don’t you? I wonder what Rip’d say ’bout it if I asked ’im?”

A flush of heat burned up her neck. She pounded both fists into the pastry. “You wouldn’t dare.”

He eyed the pastry. A wise man might not push a woman in this kind of mood, but, then, Esme had always been his confidante. “Wouldn’t I?”

“If you mention anything of the sort to John, I’ll box your ears.”

“Well, someone oughta take the blinders off ’is eyes.” Blade snagged a piece of pastry and danced past her as she swung out at him. “Man’s got ’is ’ead buried deeper ’n an ostrich.”

“John’s been very kind to me.” Her hands stilled. “Too kind. I’m not at all certain that how I feel…” She broke off and took a deep breath. “I don’t believe my feelings are reciprocated.”

“Aye. That’s why ’e looks murder at me whenever it’s your turn to come up to me rooms.”

Esme shot him a sidelong glance. “He wouldn’t dare. He worships you.”

“Per’aps that’s why ’e don’t let on to you. Let me ’ave a chat with ’im, man to man.” One little conversation ought to clear up this little mess that was developing in his home. Blade took his responsibilities seriously, and as far as he could see, Rip and Esme’s future happiness was part of that responsibility.

“You’re a regular matchmaker. Perhaps you ought to take your own advice. I’ll let you deal with John if you allow me to have a little discussion with Honoria.”

The smile on his face died. “No.”

“Not so easy a solution when the shoe is on the other foot, is it?” Esme rolled her eyes. “You can’t control everything, Blade. And you can’t force her trust. Be patient.”

He tapped the diaries against his thigh. “I been more ’n patient. She won’t tell me a bleedin’ thing.”

“And of course you’ve been the soul of confession with her,” Esme replied.

He paused.

“Why should she trust you when you haven’t trusted her?”

“Not the kind of bedtime stories a lady wants to ’ear.”

“Maybe her stories aren’t either.”

Blade scratched at his jaw. “I’ll think ’bout it.”

“Coward.”

“Now, that’s the pot callin’ the kettle black, ain’t it?”

***

Blade sauntered down the stairs, listening to the sounds of muted conversation in his audience chamber. Blue bloods. In his home. And one of them had some form of connection to Honoria.

He wore a scowl as he pushed the double doors wide with a bang. Both Barrons and a stranger turned to look at him, neither of them flinching in surprise. Barrons wore metal-plated body armor over his torso, with a pair of buff trousers, worn knee-high boots, and a short sword at his side. The hilt was unadorned and the grip had seen use. Once again Blade was forced to revise his opinion on the man. Barrons just might be dangerous with a sword. Blade’s scowl deepened.

“Blade,” Barrons said and nodded to his companion. “This is Sir Jasper Lynch, huntmaster of the guild.”

Lynch was taller than both of them, his features cool and calculating as he watched the byplay. The aquiline tilt of his nose and the deep-set gray eyes brought to mind the image of a falcon. He nodded courteously, though no deeper than one blue blood to another. “We have a vampire to hunt?”

“We do.”

“Any idea of its location?” Lynch watched him intently. He wore the stiff black leather coat of the Guild of Hunters, with its white frogging down the middle and chrome epaulets on his broad shoulders.