Venice Vampyr - The Beginning

He put his finger across her lips. “No but. With you, everything is perfect. I’ve never been in want of a mistress, but now that I have you, I can’t seem to remember how I ever did without.”


His answer seemed to please her if he interpreted her sweet smile correctly. “You know that you don’t have to charm me if you want to have your way with me again. I’m not likely to refuse you.”

“The way I recall it is that you were having your way with me. Or aren’t you the same woman who just rode me like the Devil was chasing her?” He’d never seen a woman with such enthusiasm to please him. As if she’d wanted to snap his control in half like a twig in the path of an approaching army.

“You didn’t like it?” Her smile told him that she knew his answer full well. He’d loved every second of it.

Lorenzo reached down to her bottom and gave it a quick slap. “I think somebody is in need of a little disciplining. It’ll teach you not to mock your master.”

When he glanced at her face, he caught a flash of fear in her eyes. He instantly stilled his hand then stroked gently over her soft flesh. “Don’t fear me, Bianca. I promised you I’d never hurt you. You believe me, don’t you?”

He held his breath as he waited for her answer, hoping he hadn’t scared her with his demands. Despite the fact that he’d started out by trying to push her to her limits to make her confess about her deception, his need to have her tell him the truth about her past and her motives for being with him had made way for the delight he felt when he realized that she didn’t shy away from even the most debauched acts he shared with her. It didn’t matter anymore that her motives for being with him weren’t honest. Bianca had made up for it with the uninhibited passion she allowed him to tease out of her.

It seemed like an eternity until her lips finally parted and her breath ghosted against his skin. “I trust you.”

***

Bianca let the words roll over her tongue and realized the moment they hit the air that she spoke the truth. She trusted Lorenzo, the man she knew to be a vampire, the man who could kill her so easily if he wanted to.

Yet instead of fear, another emotion coursed through her like blood rushing through her veins: excitement. Lorenzo wanted her, not simply to rut on her, but to keep him company. And he’d confessed that he couldn’t get enough of her. The way with which he looked at her now, desire and affection equal occupants in his gleaming eyes, she truly couldn’t imagine that he’d ever hurt her. Even when she recalled the way he’d looked when he’d quarreled with his friend, when his fangs had shown and his eyes had burned like molten lava, no fear emerged in her heart.

On the contrary, knowing what power he kept leashed inside him, made her desire for him even more intense.

Bianca brushed her lips against his. “You won’t hurt me.”

“And you won’t hurt me,” he whispered back before he took her lips and kissed her more tenderly than he ever had before.

And if a vampire could be tender, then she had nothing to fear from him, she knew it in her heart. Her only fear now was that he tired of her, because what she wanted most was to stay with him, not to continue her search for the treasure, but to be with Lorenzo.

When he carried her to bed that night and cradled her in his arms, Bianca didn’t sleep for a long time. Instead, she watched him sleep, watched how his chest fell and rose with each breath. He was a living, breathing man, full of passion and tenderness. And he had power over her, just like she had power over him.

His friend’s words echoed in her ears. “Do you trust her enough not to kill you in your sleep?”

Bianca looked at Lorenzo’s sleeping nude form and stroked her hand over the place where his heart was. It beat against her palm, strong and steady.

“My love,” he mumbled in his sleep.

No, she couldn’t hurt him, even if he turned out to be a terrible monster. So she hoped with all her heart that whatever it meant to be a Vampire was nothing more than an affliction that required him to drink blood, but that apart from that gruesome act, he was as humane as she thought herself to be.

“Sleep, my love, you’re safe,” she whispered and snuggled into the curve of his body.





Chapter Seventeen




Ever since the night he’d quarreled with Raphael, Lorenzo thought that Bianca looked at him differently. Whenever she thought he wasn’t watching, he caught her perusing him in a most peculiar fashion as if she couldn’t believe her own eyes. It would have been unnerving, had she not at the same time become even more wanton in bed, inciting him to drive them both to the point where control shattered and ecstasy ruled supreme.

“Tie me up!” Bianca urged him now as she lay writhing underneath him, already bathed in sweat from their lovemaking but eager for more.