“Well, if the pinching of my skin is any indication, I’m still wearing my corset,” she snapped. “And that’s where the knife is.”

She felt him go absolutely still. And then, after a moment of stunned silence, she heard the soft puff of a laugh. “My God, Victoria, I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Are you saying you want me to help you out of your corset? Here and now?”

She couldn’t help her own little smile, there in the dark, at the sound of pure lust mixed with shock in his voice. Even though it was not the time nor the place, the thought—the memory of his hands on her skin and breasts and hips—made that little shiver that had traveled up her arm just a moment ago turn into a longer, deeper one that spiraled down, tangling sharply in her belly. Her mouth dried and she swallowed back the absurdity of thinking of such things when they were in danger.

As was her mother.

The sudden reminder of Lady Melly’s possible fate put sharpness back into Victoria’s voice. “No, not to take it off. Just…one of the front strips of boning, on the…er…the left side has been replaced with a slender stiletto blade. I’ll need you to help me remove it, and then put it to use. Do you think you can handle that?”

“I shall certainly do my best,” he said gallantly. “Er…shall I start from the top…or the bottom?”

There was much too much relish in those words, and Victoria had to resist the urge to snap back at him, especially since the answer was, “From the bottom.” Annoying how dry her mouth had become and how unsteady her voice was.

But Sebastian said nothing, nothing at all, to her surprise. He positioned himself so that he was in front of her, but with his back facing her. Thus, he was brushing up against the side of her left thigh. As he began to move his bound hands clumsily around, trying to find the hem of the skirt to slip between it and the edge of her shift, Victoria said a brief prayer of thanks that it wasn’t Max who’d been required to help her. The idea of his strong, long-fingered hands sliding up under her gown made her stomach flutter unpleasantly.

She turned her thoughts smartly away from that and found herself distracted by the gentle stroking of Sebastian’s fingers as he brushed his knuckles over the top of her stockinged leg, now separated from his touch by only the very thin fabric of her shift. The undergarment was of such fine cotton that it might not have been there at all. Her breathing was becoming a bit rough, and she tried to slow it, to steady and level it. She didn’t want to think about the tingling that erupted between her legs as her sensitive skin was exposed from under the much heavier silk of her gown, and then as it was caressed by his finger.

“I hope that you shall put me out of my misery and tell me that the skinny stick of a woman wasn’t your mother,” Sebastian said, his fingers sliding beyond the crease where her left leg joined her hip.

“Skinny woman? What are you talking about?” Her voice was a bit breathy, but maybe he wouldn’t notice. He certainly seemed to be concentrating on what he was doing, if his own steady breathing was any indication.

“There were three of them together—the dry, brittle one, the loud, large, pillowy one, and the bossy, elegant one. I was rather hoping,” he said, his fingers at last beginning to tug at the bottom edge of her corset, searching by feel for the blade, “that none of them was your mother…but since they were talking about you as if they knew you well, I realized I was bound to be disappointed.”

“You saw them? If you caused them to be captured too, Sebastian, I shall never forgive you!” She focused on irritation rather than on the movements of his fingers as they felt around her stays. “It should be there somewhere. You’ll feel the short handle protruding from the bottom of the corset…just…yes, there! I do wish you would hurry.”

“Oh, faithless woman,” he replied. “It was I, in fact, who saved the dry stick of a woman from being some undead’s evening feed. And it was I who directed the man who was supposed to be protecting them—Zavier, was that his name?—to their location so that he could whisk them to safety.”

“So they are safe?” Victoria breathed a long sigh of relief that had nothing to do with the gentle tickling of his knuckles as he worked on pulling the knife from its special slot in the corset. “Oh, how silly of me to forget, Sebastian, there is a little frog enclosure that keeps the blade from sliding out and wreaking its havoc on my gown. You must loosen it and the braid holding it in place will fall away and you will be able to—Oh! Stop that!”

He chuckled in his Sebastian way, low and laced with warmth. “But you liked it before, ma chère.”

“That was when I trusted you,” she replied smartly, feeling him pulling on the corset again instead of letting his fingers stray where they should not have gone. “Actually, I don’t believe I’ve ever trusted you, but that was before you drugged and kidnapped me. And why did you say you hoped Lady Petronilla—the slender one—was not my mother?”

Sebastian gave a groan of relief as the stiletto at last came free of its place in her stays, and he pulled it away.

“Take care you don’t cut me with it,” Victoria ordered, glad that the moment was over as she rustled her skirts back into place by shifting her legs. “I’ll move so you can slice my ropes—no, no, on second thought, I think it would be best if I did the cutting. If you would put the blade down, I’ll move so I can pick it up and saw your ropes.”

“What a splendid idea. At least the blood you’ll draw will mingle with what’s already there. And, to answer your question,” he said as she maneuvered herself slowly around so that they were back-to-back again, she sitting on her haunches so that her hands were that much higher, “I was particularly hoping the dried-up stick wasn’t your flesh and blood because it is a well-known adage—at least to the male population—that a woman, when aging, takes after the looks of her mother.”

Victoria had levered up the knife and was sawing delicately, and awkwardly, against the ropes. “And whatever is wrong with the way Lady Petronilla looks?” She couldn’t keep the little grunt from her voice as she felt soreness and pain radiating up her wrists from the tense, awkward motions. Her injured left leg screamed under the weight of her body as she knelt there, working as fast yet as carefully as she could.

“She is as flat as a board. Flatter, even.”

“Flat as a—Oh.” Victoria bit her lip and rolled her eyes in the dark.

“Ah, at last! I can feel my fingers again,” Sebastian said, and he wiggled said fingers against hers.

“Take care,” she warned, “else you’ll get them cut and then you won’t feel them at all. This blade is wickedly sharp.”

“It is indeed, for I’m free already.”

She felt a jolt as he pulled his wrists apart, brushing against her as the ropes fell away. He gave a relieved exhale as he took the blade from her aching fingers. Victoria heard the unmistakable sound of friction, as if he were rubbing his wrists and arms to get the blood flowing again. Which was something she longed to do herself, as soon as she was untied.

“Now what are you doing?” she asked, impatient to be free.

“Cutting apart my ankles. You do realize,” he said with a sudden, low chuckle, “that I am free and you are still bound, my lovely Venator. And that I have the rare advantage over you?”

A little squirm started in her middle, making her feel ill. Or…perhaps it was something altogether different from nausea. “Sebastian,” she said in warning, then remembered. “I have to ask you something about my aunt.”

“…and that you are at my mercy?” His voice had taken on a low purr, and suddenly he was next to her, moving with such freedom that she knew his legs were also unbound.

“Sebastian, when you took her vis bulla—”

His hands found her face easily—how, in the dark, she didn’t know—but when his elegant yet sticky fingers curled under her chin and around the back of her neck, the only thing she could do was try to pull back as she lost her train of thought.

She had no leverage, nothing but her aching wrists and chilled fingers to hold her steady, propped behind her. When Sebastian moved closer, bringing that familiar scent of clove that always clung to him and setting her heart to pounding, Victoria had nowhere to go except down to the floor…and that was one place she didn’t want to go.

He missed her mouth that first time, his lips brushing just above his fingers, in the middle of her cheek. But he soon rectified the error and drew her forward, up on her knees and toward him, chest to bosom, as he covered her mouth with his.

Eleven

In Which Michalas’s Wish Is Granted

As so often occurred when kissing Sebastian, Victoria found herself more helpless than not, with her hands still tied and her balance precarious. Yet she closed her eyes there in the dark and opened her mouth when he opened his, accepting his slick tongue and offering her own. The aches in her hand and leg eased, fading away in the wake of the deep kiss that reminded her how much she had missed this—intimate touching, passionate kissing, Sebastian himself.

She couldn’t see him, just barely the dark shape of a shadow close to her, blocking her vision. But she pictured his handsome face and the sensual curling of his tawny, lion’s-mane hair, surely tousled from battle with the vampires. His eyes were a darker shade of the same hue, a chestnut, and his skin—so unlike his grandfather’s pale visage—was golden. He looked like a bronze angel, she’d often thought. An ironic description.His lips were soft and smooth, fitting to hers and then drawing closed to lick and then nibble at the corner of her mouth, his teeth gnawing gently at her bottom lip, right where his grandfather had bitten her the night before. Victoria started when she realized this, when she felt his teeth on the tender part of her lip, and tried to turn away. But he was cradling her face in his hands and only kissed her more deeply than ever.