The Queen of Swords: A Paranormal Tale of Undying Love by Nina Mason Read Free Book Online

where she bought most of her vampire books and magical supplies; Our Lady of Perpetual Hope, the little white Catholic chapel which invoked a twinge of guilt every time she passed by; and Second Hand Rose’s, the vintage shop where she bought most of her clothes and objet d’art . Beside her, in the driver’s seat, Avery endlessly effused about Benedict.
    He’s so handsome. He’s so charming. He’s so clever.
    Maybe so, she wanted so badly to scream, but can he shag you with his stare?
    The moment they were through the front door, she made a beeline for her bedroom, muttering something to Avery about getting back to her dissertation. After locking the door, she headed straight for her desk and switched on the lamp. Still struggling to steer her mind back to vampires, she started picking through the articles she’d collected over the past several months. Most of them addressed the vampire’s sexual prowess, as the title of her doctorate was Romancing the Vampire: His Evolution from Sexual Predator to Bad-Boy Fantasy.
    She picked up Carmilla , a Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu telling of a young woman’s seduction by a vampiric female being. The cover showed a young woman in white—the victim, presumably—peering out a castle window with a mixture of longing and forlorn.
    Images and sensations from earlier floated through her mind. The feel of his mouth, the weight of his body, the impression of penetration. Desire fluttered deep in her abdomen like a trapped bird. She bit down, forcing her focus back to the book in her hand. She thumbed through its pages, scanning and jotting some notes before setting it down. As she picked up Dracula , the image of his hand reaching past her flashed through her mind.
    He was lucky to have no reflection to forever fuck with his head.
    A chill crawled down her spine. Shuddering, s he turned to a dog-eared page and began to read a highlighted passage.
    In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time I must have been dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where...
    Eeriness washed over her, raising the hairs on her nape as she re-read the last line.
    Good goddess.
    Was he?
    Could he possibly be?
    It certainly would explain a few things.
    Like his seductive stare—the one so penetrating she could feel it inside her.
    Not to mention, his habit of vanishing like a phantom. Or how he knew about her Cinderella Charm.
    But it didn’t explain the visions or the bagpipes...nor did she feel “dreamy fear” when she looked at him. What she felt was a blazing desire to jump his bones. Even now it smoldered deep in her belly.
    She dropped Dracula on the desk as if it had caught fire. Flushed with sexual longing, she unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor. Stepping out of it, she moved toward the bed. Wearing only her bra and panties, she reclined and reached to the nightstand. Easing open the drawer, she felt around for the book she kept on hand for such occasions: The Rampant Cock , an erotic Scottish historical.
    The scuffed cover featured a buff, bare-chested Highlander. Inside, the pages were yellowed, heavily dog-eared, and smelled suspiciously of dust mites. As she read the first of the bawdiest passages, she slipped a hand between her legs, imagining it belonged to the long-fingered Scot.
    The pleasure swiftly built to a climax and, when the last shudders of release had passed, she dropped the book in the open