This time when she spread her knees, he did not demur or find a new position. He angled his member at her entrance and lifted her hips slightly. Three careful thrusts, each deeper, and she was filled. Their satisfaction was sighed in unison. He moved inside her, adjusted the angle so that his member pressed against the secret spot that washed sensation over her. Perfect.And yet she wanted more. She reached up and pulled him toward her. "I want to feel your body on mine," she breathed. And in truth his warm flesh on her belly and b.r.e.a.s.t.s even as he thrust inside her was fulfilling. Still... was there not one more intimacy they could share? She wanted... everything-all the experience she could have of him. "Now," she whispered into his ear, "take my blood."

He pushed himself up on his elbows and blinked at her in disbelief.

Did she have to explain? "It was so intimate... I want to feel you sucking at my throat even as you release your seed inside me."

His breath was coming fast. "I... I just took blood from you."

"I'm as healthy as the proverbial horse. I want this."

He swallowed once and nodded. He let himself down, but left his weight still supported on his elbows. Slowly and deliberately, he thrust into her. She turned her head to the side, exposing the twin wounds that must still be there. She felt his growl of desire rumble in his chest as much as heard it. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw his eyes turn red. And there, sliding out of half- open lips panting with desire, were his canines, elongated. But she wasn't afraid. She knew what would happen, what it felt like.

She trusted Gian not to take too much. After all, hadn't he stopped in time even when he was starved for blood?

He bent to her throat. Again the small sear of pain-like being p.r.i.c.ked by thorns, no more. He withdrew his teeth immediately And then he began to lick softly, in time to this thrusting inside her. He was consciously taking less blood this time. She moaned in pleasure. It was as though she was giving herself in every way to him. His desire was palpable in the air around them. He began to thrust more forcefully inside her, faster, and then to suck in rhythm with his thrusts. Her heart beat in syncopation. She hung suspended between his c.o.c.k and his lips, a vessel filled and flowing. Satisfaction filled her.

And then he couldn't hold back. He stilled and trembled as he exploded inside her. He stopped his sucking and let his tiny grunts of o.r.g.a.s.m be breathed against her neck. And that was even more satisfying, that she could make him almost insensible with pleasure.

He collapsed against her, nuzzling and kissing her neck. "So generous. So generous, Kate," he murmured.

"Nonsense," she breathed in return. "I just wanted it all." She had experienced all of who he was and it was devastating. Her feeling for him was a gushing fountain. It would flow long after she had gotten him out of here and he had moved on to pleasure other women.

"But you haven't had it all." He slipped out of her and slid to her right side, cradling her against his body. She curled there, contentment washing over her. But he parted her thighs with his right hand and two fingers glided inside her. She was very wet.

She opened her hips to him and he slid his fingers out and over that spot she never knew she had before those nights at the Palazzo Vecchio. Oh! That was perhaps the most intense sensation yet. She touched his bearded cheek as he moved his fingers over her moist flesh. She had a hard time breathing calmly. He surprised her by taking her fingers into his mouth. The moist flesh she felt there seemed to mirror her own. He sucked gently on her first two fingers as he rubbed her. She had been l.u.s.ting for him for so long at this point that she was teetering on some edge. But just as she seemed about to leap over that edge he would pause with his fingers and just suck on hers for a moment. And when she was just about to beg him to begin again, he did, and off and on until she couldn't think about anything but his fingers and her fingers and moist flesh.

Her world squinched shut and then thrust wide. He didn't stop rubbing her and that was good because she never wanted him to stop. She was just about to scream when he kissed her quiet. She yipped into his mouth as her o.r.g.a.s.m rocked her in wave upon wave. It seemed to go on forever, until she had to wrench away from his hand or lose sanity entirely.

Chapter Sixteen.

Gian looked down at her sleeping form. Her scarred cheek was laid against his chest. She was beautiful, scar or no. Generous and fearless too. His love for her was doomed to tear at his intestines like the wolf cub at the legendary Spartan boy. But at least it made him feel alive. He was not bored. And the wars seemed far behind him.

He had to get her out of here. The sense of urgency brought him fully awake. Her blood had given him enough strength for healing, but he could feel the need for more itching in his veins even now. She could give no more. He didn't have power enough to translocate, let alone take her with him. Jupiter and Hera, how were they going to get out of here? As if she sensed his fear, she stirred and opened sleepy eyes.

When she looked up at him, his heart almost gave out. There was a warmth, a vulnerability, in those blue eyes that made him want to crush her to his chest. He drew his brows together. What was he seeing there?

She glanced up to where light leaked in around the fur she'd stuffed in the window. A mote of light was creeping across the floor toward them. He'd have to move soon, but that meant he had to let her out of his arms, and he wasn't ready for that yet.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Getting on toward one." She turned in his arms and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s brushed his chest. He felt himself rising. Down, boy, he thought.

You'd better save your strength.

She smiled at him, a knowing smile. She'd felt his response to her. But then she frowned, and glanced back to the window. She sat up abruptly. '"I must go."

"And how will you manage that?"

She glanced up at the window, then back at him. She examined his face as though she could read the future in it. "I'm going out that window."

She was leaving him. Well, that was what he wanted. She at least should survive. She nodded once and stood. He watched her dress, knowing he would never see those perfect limbs, those delightful b.r.e.a.s.t.s again. He rose and helped her lace her half- corset, tie on her bodice. Really, female clothing was so complicated these days. He preferred the toga. He tried to keep his mind on those small tasks instead of on the fact that Kate was about to climb out of his life through that window.

When she had put on her slippers, she tossed her hair behind her back and strode to the wall. "Let me toss you up," he offered.

Again, she only nodded. He cupped his hands, and she put one dainty foot in them. "Ready? One, two," he counted. "Three."

She jumped and he lifted. He still wasn't strong. She barely reached the window. But she grabbed hold of the deep embrasure and pulled herself up to crouch in the opening. She tossed the fur back into the chapel.

"Cover yourself as much as you can," she said. "I'm sorry this will be uncomfortable. I'll be back before two."

He squinted at the blaze of light. "I'll stay out of the direct rays." Indeed, he was burning even now. He strode over to the most shadowed corner.

They stared at each other for a long moment. And then she put her arms through to the outside, slid her hips into the room, turned and pulled her shoulders through the opening, angling them. She was really quite clever about it. She twisted, so she was on her back. He watched as she squeezed through. He thought her hips might get stuck, but soon she was sitting in the embrasure from the other side. Then her feet slithered through the opening.

She was gone.

She'd left him. He wanted that. But it did not make him feel less bleak. He slid down the stone wall and huddled under the fur, his head on his knees to keep the light out of his eyes.

Now he was alone. Elyta had the stones. And she had him. He wondered idly how long she would keep him alive. He hoped it wasn't long.

Kate slipped through the lush gardens, drowsy with sunlight, and out the gates into the piazza. She had a plan, such as it was.

She had thought briefly of trying to muster help from the villagers. But who would believe her when she said the owner was held hostage in his own house when they hadn't seen him for a score of years?

So, her first stop was a clothesline or a laundry. A girl was much too conspicuous. She slipped into a narrow corridor off the little square and picked her way down an alley behind the whitewashed buildings with tile roofs. Cats slunk among the barrels of refuse that smelled like rotting vegetables and sc.r.a.ps of meat past their prime. Those smells were a part of her now, ever since she'd awakened on a trash heap when she was six.

But this smell emanated from a butcher shop whose discards attracted flies. On a line in the butcher's back garden fluttered coa.r.s.e white shirts and ap.r.o.ns. Excellent. She let herself in by the gate. Through the open doorway, beyond a storeroom, she could see a clerk shooshing the last customers out so he could close the shop for the traditional midday dinner break. She pulled down what looked like a boy's shirt, an ap.r.o.n. None were big enough for Gian. Sergei was probably her best bet for clothes for Gian. Which meant she'd better make this quick. If only there had been breeches. So she'd need a boy...

"Buon giorno," she called, and smiled as the young man ducked under the foliage of the lemon grove that clung to the side of the hill to see who hailed him.

His features slowly cracked into a grin. "Buon giorno, signorina." He pulled his forelock. He did not yet shave. He was probably, what, twelve? Then he looked closer. "Wot's wrong with your face?" Not a bright light.

"Never mind that. I want to make a trade," she said.

He looked puzzled. She unveiled the very large sausages. His eyes grew round. "For wot?" he asked suspiciously.

"Your breeches and shoes." She held her breath. "And stockings and cap," she added, thinking about how uncomfortable those shoes were going to be. She had a flash of this boy, now with a grown beard, proposing to an una.s.suming girl with dark hair on her upper lip. When she said "Si, signore," a flood of happiness washed over him. Kate pushed the vision down.

"These is only my work shoes, and the breeches is torn," he said.

"And these are only two of the butcher's best sausages," she said mournfully.

His expression grew sly. "Well, I guess I could trade."

Hooked. She turned around. "Then give them to me now."

She could hear him stripping, muttering gleefully to himself. "By the way, signore, did... did you hear of a murder hereabouts this morning?"

"Murder! No."

"Ahhhh." Maybe Luigi and the groom had made it away. G.o.d, but she hoped so. She hated to think they had lost their lives for her. "Just wondering."

"Here. Now trade fair and square."She turned to find the boy in his flaxen smalls, holding out his articles of clothing. She gave him the sausage, and he took off running toward the village, apparently unconcerned at his near nakedness. So, using the cover of the lemon grove, she struggled out of her dress and half-corset, put the lad's stockings over her own, pulled on the breeches and shirt and slipped her feet into the stiff leather shoes. They were still too big. It didn't matter. She tied the ap.r.o.n about her neck and waist and twisted her hair up in her cap. There.

But who would not recognize her scar? She took some damp earth and rubbed it over her cheek and her temple. Maybe. Now where on earth was she going to get a cart? Back to the butcher...

By the time she was through the gates of the villa she was breathing hard just from willing the horse to move faster. She pulled him round to the old part of the building near the chapel, the cart wheels creaking, and asked him to halt, a command he was most eager to obey.

She dashed back to the newer wing, painted palest pink, and looked up to where the lights had been on last night. Everything was shuttered. The sun was just past its zenith. It beat down, hot on her face, and reflected off the walls of the villa in that brilliant Mediterranean light that drove artists to their canvases in a frenzy. Insects buzzed in the garden but all else was silent.

Surely, the vampires would be fast asleep at this sunniest of times. She took slow breaths and closed her eyes. Calm. Silent.

That was what she was.

She found a pa.s.sageway into a shadowed cloister that gave onto a huge room with pointed stone arches that held up the newer part of the building. The moist stone reeked of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. And there at the far side was a stairway leading upward. She hurried up the stairs to a stout wooden door. She tried the latch. Of course it was unlocked. Who would dare to steal from the Villa Rufolo? She took off the boy's clunky shoes, and let herself in. The room beyond was one of the salons she had seen this morning. She recognized the chandelier. But she wanted bedrooms. She stole along the Turkey carpets to a door at the other side of the room. Yes. A corridor. The bedrooms would be off a corridor.

The doork.n.o.bs were almost at her shoulder height, and made of the finest porcelain. As a matter of fact, the entire villa was furnished in the first style, Baroque and Rococo veneered sideboards, chandeliers dripping with Venetian crystal, silver epergnes as big as she was. Once she would have been looking for plate and silver and jewels in a house like this. Something about jewels niggled in her brain.

She checked each dim room until she came to the one that held Sergei. His snoring filled the hall. She slipped inside. Control your breathing. You are air. You are vapor wafting over the carpet. Sergei's ma.s.sive form under the coverlet was still except for the rise and fall of his chest. She slid over to the wardrobe, timing her movement to the snorts. The wardrobe door clicked, once, as she opened it. She froze. But Sergei sawed on. Boots, shirt, coat, and a cloak. She pulled open a drawer on Sergei's buzzing intake of breath and grabbed stockings, smalls, cravat. Holding her breath entirely, she crept out of the room.

In the dim tiled hall she exhaled. Now for Gian. Would he not be amazed and relieved to find she had engineered the whole?

She had a solution for his nakedness, a cart to get them down to Amalfi, and a disguise for herself. They could get a better carriage in Amalfi. Surely his credit was good in these parts. Someone at the shipyard must know him. And then they would go back to Firenze and...

b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.

She could see it now. He wouldn't go back to Firenze. He wouldn't be happy with her arrangements at all. The d.a.m.ned fool.

He wouldn't leave the stones to Elyta. His b.l.o.o.d.y inconvenient sense of duty would demand he try to complete his stupid mission. She could just see him blundering around the villa making who knew what noise as he tried to steal the jewels back. She stood in the salon staring, unseeing, at the unfamiliar ragged boy in the great, gilt-framed mirror over the mantel of the fireplace.

d.a.m.n the man to h.e.l.l and back.

She retraced her steps. The stones would be in Elyta's room.Gian crouched in the corner, as much of himself covered with the fur as possible, not moving. A sense of failure pervaded him, along with the itching burn of light along his skin even under the fur, worse where his feet and shoulders were exposed. In a few moments, the sun would be at the right angle to shine directly through the little rose window above the door and fill the room with direct sunlight. It wouldn't be as bad as the bubbling flesh he'd experienced when Elyta had chained him naked in its channel of radiance, but it would be no evening picnic.

He lifted his head only at the sound of the lock being opened. It could not be much past two. Elyta would have to transport inside the room. She wouldn't come through the sunlight outside. A flicker of hope sprang up and was ruthlessly suppressed. He stood. If it was she, he didn't want her to see him crouching. He vowed that he would curse her, at least inside his mind, with his last breath.

The door swung wide. A figure was silhouetted against a blinding light. A man. Gian covered his eyes. It wasn't anyone he knew.

The figure was short, and... lumpy. He hissed in a breath and turned away.

"Sorry about the light." The door swung shut with a thunk.

Kate! He squinted against the light that remained in the chamber. He couldn't quite see. It didn't look like Kate. The figure moved into the shadow and bent over him. It was Kate all right. She was dressed in rough peasant's clothing, an ap.r.o.n, and stocking feet, her hair tucked up under a cap with a short brim and her face muddied.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

She had come back for him. He was touched. And angry. Nothing had changed. "You were going to get out of here, remember?"

"We're both getting out of here." She tumbled some clothes at his feet. He stared at them. Men's clothes. Boots. Even smalls and a cravat. They smelled faintly of cinnamon. He looked a question at her. "Sergei. He was the only one whose coat might remotely fit your shoulders. Now could we have a little haste, please?" She raised her brows, exasperated.

He stood and threw off the cloak. Immediately, the discomfort of the buzzing burn along his skin ramped up. He pulled on the shirt first. "You stole these from the house while they were sleeping?" By Jupiter, the girl was brazen. She shrugged, and motioned him for haste.

Everywhere his skin was bare the light sc.r.a.ped at him. "Even with clothes I won't make it far." He didn't mean to growl at her.

"Leave now, Kate."

"I brought a cart. It has a tarpaulin. Between the clothing and the tarpaulin I thought you might survive the sun."

He paused to look up at her. She was frowning, anxious. He shrugged a grudging a.s.sent and she relaxed. "You acquired clothing for yourself, clothes for me, and a cart all in... in about ninety minutes?" Astounding.

"It will all come to naught unless you hurry. The cart will be missed soon."

"Yes, yes," he muttered, pulling on the breeches. She was tapping her foot. For heaven's sake, she'd brought boot pulls. He slipped them into the tabs at the insides of a boot and pulled it on. She threw the cravat around his neck.

"Don't bother to tie this now. We must be off."

He straightened, as realization came crashing in on him. "I must do one thing first."

She sighed. "You are so predictable."

He drew himself up even taller and looked down at her. "I have my-" "Yes, yes, your duty." She fished in the pocket of the trousers that were loose around her waist and a little tight over her hips.

She held up her reticule, the silver one with beading she always carried. It was full and lumpy. She pulled open its drawstrings and took out a little silver box. "There." She snapped it open. Inside nestled the great emerald. "I have the ruby too. I knew you wouldn't leave without them."

"You stole them from under Elyta's nose?"

Kate shrugged. "They were asleep. I'm very quiet." She raised her brows again and pointed to the coat. "I got my reticule back too. The money and my tarot deck were still inside."

He grabbed the coat and shrugged into it. Not hard, since it was a little big across the middle. Sergei had something of a paunch.

He took the two boxes and put them into the coat pockets. He nodded, steeling himself for the coming ordeal in the sun. "Let's go."

"Wait." She threw the cloak over his head before she opened the door. The rays felt like a rasp against even the skin that was covered. He was d.a.m.nably weak. Light blinded him where it bounced off the rock of the walk and up under his shroud. If only he had his spectacles of dark blue gla.s.s, he might be able to see. "Go," he said through gritted teeth. "I'll follow."

"Nonsense." She put her arms around his shoulders to guide him. He stumbled beside her, trying to breathe, nearly blind. They reached the shade of the cypress grove at the end of the house. He smelled horse, recognized the wheel of a cart. She pulled at ropes that tied down the tarpaulin. He crawled up under it and was surrounded by the smell of cheese and raw meat and sausages, fresh-baked bread and the yeasty smell of a cask of wine. He pushed everything aside and crouched next to the cask.

The pain of the sun eased and he heaved a breath. He heard the hiss of hemp as she tied the tarp down.

Relief shot through him. Then a nasty thought intruded.

"Can you drive a cart?"