The glass slipped in her hand, but she held on to it. Just barely. Turning, she faced Giordan Cale for the first time in a decade.
Their eyes met for a moment and she felt the twin spears of loathing: hers for him, and the same emotion shining in his own burning gaze. He was baiting her, referring to her imprudent choice to accompany Chas to London rather than stay with Giordan at Reither’s Closewell.
Narcise didn’t bother to respond other than to add a warning flash of fangs to a brief sneer. Sipping her whiskey—trying not to gulp what she suddenly, desperately needed—she walked over to stand next to Chas.
But Giordan was no longer paying attention to her. He’d turned, presenting her mostly with his back as Dimitri grudgingly introduced him to the Woodmore girls. Narcise sipped from her glass again, focusing on the heat burning down to her belly and through her limbs and not the back of his head, or the way his coffee-colored coat stretched perfectly over broad shoulders. Giordan paid his tailor well.
He looked the same as he had the last time they’d seen each other, although then his face had been bitter and hard, and worn from nights of depravity and hedonism. Tonight, his handsome features were relaxed and his eyes bland, except for that brief flash of emotion when she first saw him. Giordan still wore his hair unfashionably short, in close, rich-brown curls that left his Slavic forehead and temples exposed. She caught a glimpse of his hand, ungloved, curled into a fist against his thigh and realized he wasn’t as unmoved as he appeared.
But whether it was anger or hate that tensed his fingers, she didn’t know.
And she didn’t care. She was hardly aware of the conversation going on around her until Dimitri made a joke that wasn’t really a joke about Giordan taking over the responsibility of the Woodmore girls and their guardianship. It was quite clear to everyone in the room that he was deadly serious about it.
Giordan responded with easy humor, accepting a glass of whiskey that his friend had moved to pour for him. “I wouldn’t dream of depriving you, Dimitri.”
“But why can’t we go with you, Chas?” asked Maia.
Narcise looked at her, noting the firm yet desperate note in her voice. Someone was either very attached to her brother, or exceedingly unhappy at Blackmont Hall. Pleased to have something to distract her from the presence of the man she loathed most in the world—or second most; that other honor belonged to Cezar—Narcise watched the elder Woodmore sister.
Upon closer observation, Narcise had to adjust her first impression of the young woman. Despite Maia’s self-assurance and need to be in control, there was an underlying sort of heat exuding from her that made her softer and more sensual than at first glance. Perhaps something only another woman would notice.
Narcise glanced at the young Maia and amended her thought—perhaps only another woman who was very experienced in the ways of intimacy would notice the sense of unfulfilled sensuality smoldering beneath capable hands and brisk movements. It lingered in the eyes, Narcise decided.
In the green-brown and gold eyes, in that full pout of an upper lip, and most of all, in the female, musky scent that her Draculian nose recognized.
This was a woman who was not experienced with men, but who was on the cusp of being so…who’d come to the edge and who hadn’t gone over. Who was waiting.
Perhaps it was because Narcise herself recognized that feeling of unfulfilled expectancy. It had taken her decades to find it, to allow herself to truly feel on a plane deeper than the merely physical. To battle through the humiliation and pain at the hands of Cezar’s friends and enemies alike, to finally make love with a man who truly awakened and aroused her. Whom she trusted and opened herself to.
Now she couldn’t bear to look at him, even when they were in the same room.
Narcise turned her attention away from those dangerous thoughts and the man in question, and happened to glance at Dimitri. The man was a rock: hard, cold and emotionless.
Exactly the way Narcise wanted to be.
Dimitri noticed the contemplative way Narcise was looking at him, as if she meant to find some deep secret in his eyes. But she, intensely beautiful and deliciously scented as she was, was much easier to ignore than the daggerish looks Chas’s sister continued to slip him.
He was trying not to think about the shock in Miss Woodmore’s face when she’d seen him standing there, in the doorway of her chamber. Naturally he’d had a legitimate reason for being there, and it wasn’t his fault that her voice carried so that he heard what she was saying regarding her dream about a vampire. The woman needed to learn restraint, blast it all.
But for a moment, his heart had stopped cold when he thought he saw recognition along with mortification in her eyes.
Then he talked himself out of it, for she simply couldn’t have put the pieces together that he was the Knave of Diamonds. He’d even taken care to remove his costume with its glass ruby and red-and-black waistcoat immediately after their…interlude.
Apparently that interlude hadn’t made as much of an impression on her as some dark, erotic dreams, which was a damn good thing. Although the fact that she seemed to be having the same sorts of dreams that had been plaguing him was another problem entirely.
He sincerely hoped that her dreams weren’t nearly as explicit and erotic as his own.
Dimitri was half listening as Chas tried to explain to his sisters that he was a vampire hunter. The fact that he’d allied himself with a beautiful, if emotionally damaged Dracule woman caused even more confusion for the Misses Woodmore. It simply wasn’t logical, of course, and they had questions.
And even Dimitri could appreciate the position of the sisters.
Which meant, blast it all, that he’d be the recipient of more badgering by Miss Woodmore when her brother disappeared again with his paramour. For it had become abundantly clear that Chas and Narcise were not merely companions on an adventure, nor was she an unwilling partner in their journey. He could smell the intimacy between them.
That wasn’t the only thing he could scent. Voss had been here, the bastard. Despite the fact that Angelica hadn’t admitted it, Dimitri knew he’d been in the house—probably in the girl’s chamber with her—tonight. For all he knew, she could have let him in herself, enthralled and helpless under his influence.
Dimitri’s teeth ground together. He and Woodmore were going to take care of Voss as soon as they found him. And then Chas would have one of his problems taken care of…leaving him with a more sensitive one.
He scanned Narcise with objective eyes. Definitely a beautiful woman. But certainly not one who had ever interested him—even that night in Vienna when Moldavi had offered her to Dimitri as a bribe of sorts. When he had a woman, however occasional that event might be, he wanted her willing and without cold, dead eyes. Not that they were cold and dead now when she looked at Chas. Cool. But not dead.