Winterly (Dark Creatures Book 1), стр. 90

Pressing the crystal to her lips, she luxuriated in the bolstering warmth of the wine as it rushed into her belly. He was barefoot, she noticed, and it occurred to her that she ought to do as the Romans do. She set her crystal on the marble-top commode and stepped out of her satin slippers.

This pleased him, or so his grin communicated. But as his eyes dropped to her crucifix, the smile faded. “Since you will not wear my sigil, perhaps I ought to devise a more permanent solution.”

“Have you no other necklace to spare?” She did not regret transferring his protection to Milli.

“Think you I have them growing rampant on my necklace tree?”

“Then how shall you—”

“Oh, we shall adorn your throat with something…” His wings whispered insidiously over the floor as he approached his bed.

“Do all vampyres have wings?” she asked.

“Not all sanguisuges are made equal. There is a vast difference between those like myself, the Fallen, and those that are merely vampyres; and an even greater disparity exists between vampyres and wights.”

“What are wights?”

“The undead; those that serve us.”

“So Mrs. Skinner—”

“Is a wight, yes.”

“And Victoria? Is she wight or Fallen?”

“Betwixt and between.” He was evidently becoming impatient with her dilly-dallying.

“But you both look alike.” Save the wings, of course.

“I disguise my terrifying splendor behind my aegis the same way I shield my wings.”

“Your aegis?”

“Just another mask, my rose; Victoria and I are not the same animal.”

“So you are not in your true form?”

“No,” he said.

“Am I to give myself to a creature who hides behind his…aegis? Remove the mask, Markus.”

“In the dark, we are truly ourselves, you know. Does it really matter what I look like in the light? Are you so easily enchanted by a pretty face? Or is the man behind the face the true object of your fascination?”

He had her there. “I suppose not.” A handsome face could only beguile for a short while—the character of the soul within was what sustained her ever increasing fascination. “Are you…is your face misshapen?”

“Misshapen?” He ran his tongue over a fang in amusement. “That is for you to say.”

Well, if he was able to see past her plain features, surely she could look past an ugly face. At least she hoped she could. “Does Victoria wear an aegis too?” No woman had any right to such supernatural beauty.

“Victoria and the wights are as you see them; but they cannot walk in the sunlight as I can, they require cloud cover at the very least. There, will that satisfy your curiosity for tonight?”

“Not by half.” Her eyes shifted pointedly to his grandiose bed. “Do vampyres sleep at all?”

“Like the dead,” he said. “How do you like my bed? It once belonged to a famous Wallachian dragon.”

“It’s rather more like a barbaric tabernacle than a bed.”

He considered this, apparently delighted by the comparison, and seated himself at the edge of his monstrous fourposter. “A tabernacle, eh? How fitting, for I certainly mean to worship here…” He ran his hand over the counterpane, his black wings stark against the silky vermillion. “I worship pleasure, Emma.” With an imperceptible nod, he bade her closer.

Emma’s heart was clamoring like a bird’s as she approached the bed. She tacitly gave him her back so that he might unfasten the dress for her. He took his time popping each nacreous button that lay along her spine. Once her gown was pooled around her feet, the same unhurried method was employed to unfasten her stays, after which the corset was relinquished to the floor. He then plucked the pins from her hair so that the locks fell unbound around her shoulders like dark silk. When she had stepped out of the puddle of silk, pins, and whale bone, she turned around to face him in nothing more than her satin chemise.

It gratified her to see desire ripple within those liquid dark pools as he beheld her. In that moment his eyes said more than his lips. “I want to consume you,” they said. It was a gaze into which she might be lost forever, no more than a phantom derelict adrift in the fog of an eternal desert sea.

Emma stretched out hesitant fingers towards his wings, but she halted just shy of touching them, her stillness questioning. Like a carved god, he remained motionless—answer enough that she had his permission to continue her examination. They ruffled slightly beneath her touch, damask stretched across iron vanes, strangely unyielding, yet soft to the touch.

“They’re beautiful,” she said. “What else can you do besides fly?”

Instead of answering her, his eyes flashed with wicked intent. The next moment the candles in the room were swiftly doused and the night rushed into the room. She could see very little by the light of the crescent moon. It did not follow, however, that he was night-blinded too. She knew he could see her with his otherworldly sight.

“How remarkable,” she whispered, disquieted. The peculiar demise of her candle earlier was a mystery no longer unsolved. The darkness was such that her remaining senses were intensified, she could actually hear her own heartbeats in the hush. “Will you now bring them back to life?”

“You mistake me for the Nazarene.” His voice was thick with irony. “I kill things, I certainly don’t resurrect them.”

Without warning, he was lifting her in his arms. Before the startled gasp escaped her lips, she was supine atop the silks and feathered pillows. The nuance of questing fingers bold against her flesh affected her tenfold now that she could not rely on her eyes to follow his movements. Another gasp quickened in the dark as her chemise was tugged from her with a brisk ripping sound. Her skin puckered instantly against the startling cold caress of the nighttime air upon her loins. Merciful Heaven! She was now utterly bare and could feel the overwhelming brush of his gaze.

“What is that mark at your navel?” he asked.

Her body jolted at the