Bitten by Desire by Marguerite Kaye Read Free Book Online

skin as the embers of the fire failed to do.
    â€œI love you,” she said defiantly. “I know you love me, else you would not have such a care for me. Just say it. Please, Vaelen, just once.”
    Her absence he would cope with as a labour of love. Her doubting him, he could not. “Of course I love you. You know I love you. Never forget that.”
    Now she did get to her feet, rushing towards him. Vaelen wrapped his arms tightly around her, holding her as if he would meld her into his skin. Imogen closed her eyes. He felt like home. They were meant to be. She was right after all. He was hers.
    A soft breeze ruffled her hair. She was flying with the ecstasy of his embrace. Then her stomach plummeted and she opened her eyes. Her feet were cold. It was dark. She was back in the garden. Alone. Save for Allegra, sitting on the plinth of the statue at Diana’s feet and blinking at her.

Chapter 6
    Imogen was withering, like a plant deprived of water, a flower deprived of sun. Everyone noticed. “It is as if the light has gone out in you,” her mama-in-law said, and talked of taking her to Bath to partake of the waters as a cure. But Vaelen was her light and the lack of him was the illness from which she suffered. No spa waters nor powders nor tonics could effect a cure.
    He was not gone yet, but her sense of him was fading. She loved him too much not to try to do as he bid her, though it cost her dearly. When he crept into her mind, she painfully closed the door on him. She lay wide-eyed, lids burning, awake until dawn, only then allowing herself a few restless hours of sleep, knowing that in the broadest hours of daylight he was safe, for he could not hear her. Vaelen was her light, and she was wilfully extinguishing it. Before long, she too would become a creature of the twilight.
    It came to her as she sat gazing out on the waning moon. True love. He said it was a myth, but what if it wasn’t? What if Lucilla died because she had not loved him enough? Or perhaps he had not loved Lucilla as much as he thought he had. So simple, she wondered Vaelen had not thought it before. He loved her as she loved him, of this Imogen had absolutely no doubt. They were meant to be. It would work, it had to work.
    Without giving herself time to think, she closed her eyes and called to him fervently, desperately, pouring her love for him into her summons. And he came. Tortured, misted in grey, with his light dimmed like hers, he came to her chamber.
    â€œImogen.” His voice was raw with defeat.
    â€œVaelen.” Seeing his beloved face again made her heart ache. She was afraid, suddenly, of how much she was asking of him. “Vaelen, I have been thinking. The legend…”
    â€œMy love, I’ve told you it is just that, a myth.”
    She pressed her hands together to stop them from shaking. “The lifeblood of a true love. What if it is not a myth? I know how much it is to ask of you. Perhaps it is too much to ask you to give up, selfish of me to even think of it, but…”
    â€œSelfish! How can you think so? Immortality is a curse when there is no one to share it with.” Vaelen took her hand, his cool lips pressing a kiss to her palm before he rubbed it to his cheek in a tender gesture that brought a lump to Imogen’s throat. “I would give my immortality up in an instant for a year, a week, a day with you as a mortal. But I can’t. It won’t work, and I won’t risk it, your life is more precious than my happiness. You would die, Imogen. And if you died, my eternity would be purgatory.”
    Imogen wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. “She didn’t love you enough. Lucilla, she didn’t love you enough. Don’t you see, she didn’t love you as I do? No one could, or ever will, no matter how many more lives you have.” She plucked at his sleeve. “Vaelen, Lucilla was not your true love, or maybe you were not hers. Did you