The Vampire Who Loved Me by Teresa Medeiros Read Free Book Online Page B

Their hands were bloody, their fingernails torn. They all fought quite passionately and courageouslyfor their lives.” Although she knew it was madness, she could not seem to stop herself from creeping closer to him. “Did you do it, Julian? Did you slaughter those poor, helpless creatures?”
    He turned and lifted his dark-lashed eyes to her. “You believe me capable of such a crime and yet you sought me out tonight? Why would you be so foolhardy?”
    How could she explain her unshaken faith in him? Her unswerving belief that he would not harm her? Not even when she knew exactly what he was capable of. “I didn’t believe you would hurt me.”
    “I’ve already hurt you.” His heavy-lidded gaze flicked to her throat, avoiding her eyes. “You’ve still got the scars to prove it.”
    Portia touched her fingers to the faded marks to still their tingling, wishing she had never surrendered her choker on the gambling table. Without it, she felt exposed. Naked.
    She forced herself to lower her hand and lift her chin, boldly meeting his gaze. “I came here tonight because I had to make sure that you didn’t kill those women. I’m the one who kept you alive in that crypt all those years ago. Ifyou take an innocent life now, then I’m just as responsible as you are.”
    He drew nearer, his shadow falling over her. His voice was a husky lullaby, perfectly pitched to lure a woman to either delight or doom. “But what if I did kill them? What if I stalked them through the night, haunted their every step, just waiting for them to hesitate or stumble so I could make them mine?” Bracing his hands against the window frame behind her, he lowered his head, brushing his cheek against hers. His flesh should have been cold, but it was warm, burning with an unnatural fever that threatened to incinerate her every defense. As his parted lips grazed the downy flesh behind her ear, a primal shiver that had little to do with fear raked through her. “What’s to stop me from doing the same to you?”
    “This,” she whispered, pressing the sharp point of the stake she had just drawn out of her reticule against his heart.
    He went as still as a statue. She expected him to jerk away from her so she could begin to think about breathing again. But he simply spread his arms in surrender, his smile as lethal a weapon as the stake in her hand. “If you’ve come here tofinish me, then let’s have done with it, shall we? My heart, as you well know, Bright Eyes, has always been yours for the asking. Or the staking.”
    As badly as she wanted to believe him, Portia suspected he’d offered that same heart to a multitude of women, only to yank it out of their hands as soon as they dared to reach for it—or the next morning after they’d awakened in his bed, dazed from blood loss but satisfied beyond their wildest dreams.
    “If you were as eager for oblivion as you’d like me to believe,” she replied, “you’d simply take a morning stroll in the sunshine.”
    Despite his crooked smile, Julian’s eyes were oddly somber. “Would you mourn me after I was gone? Would you scorn every man who tried to win your heart and squander your youth weeping over my grave?”
    “No,” she retorted sweetly, “but if one of my more ardent suitors should ever give me a cat, I might consider naming it after you.”
    “Perhaps I should leave you with something else to remember me by.” Ignoring the press of the stake against his vulnerable breastbone, he leaned even closer.
    As the seductive scents of port and spice soapand tobacco enveloped her, Portia felt her lips part and her eyes began to flutter shut against her will. That was all the distraction Julian needed. One dizzying blur of movement and he was holding both the stake and her reticule, leaving her empty-handed.
    As he backed away from her, taking his seductive fragrance with him, Portia settled back against the windowsill, blowing a stray curl out of her eyes. “That was a bit unsporting