Asher laid his wife on the bed, anxiously studying her. However, his spark of concern changed to something warmer as her robe fell open, revealing her soft white thighs. She looked so pretty in the moonlight.
"Why did you go outside to the gardens?" he asked.
Jane frowned, thinking back to those moments before the attack. "I heard a nightingale. But before that I had the strangest urge to go to the garden, almost as if someone was calling me," she answered, unconsciously rubbing her wrist.
Watching her closely, Asher took her hand and examined it closely, noticing two small nicks on her wrist.
He snarled, causing Jane to jerk back, eyeing him with alarm. "What's wrong?"
"He marked you. Not fully a bite, but a mark," Asher explained, looking pointedly at her wrist. "When? Where have you met him before?" His tone was glacial, matching the icy fury in his eyes. He would dispatch Dracul just as soon as he could find the marauding cretin. No one would touch his wife but him! As a boy he had never learned to share his toys. As an adult he'd grown no better.
"I met him at the Birds of Paradise Club. He wore a mask, and I didn't know who he was. But I was terribly frightened of him. He tried to get me to go outside. Fortunately, one of the other soiled doves and her customer came upon us, and I broke away. Shortly after that I encountered you," Jane answered shakily. "I felt a small sting, but I don't remember anything like a bite."
Asher shook his head. "It was a nip. Only a vampire as old as Dracul could have done this—marked you without a full bite. Only vampires over three hundred years of age can even call someone once they have been bitten. But, with Dracul, well… his powers are very strong." He sank beside her on the bed. "You recognized him tonight, didn't you?"
"Yes." Jane took her husband's cold hand in hers, warming it. Basking in his concern, as well as his touch, left Jane feeling slightly euphoric. In some ways she knew Asher intimately. In other ways, he was a great, wondrous mystery. Perhaps he would always be. That thought made her feel sad. She wanted her husband to need her as she needed him. She wanted him to want her as she wanted him.
Asher placed a gentle kiss on his wife's brow. The affectionate gesture surprised both himself and Jane. "He won't stop now. He has marked you, and he can call you again at anytime."
"What will we do?" Jane asked, worried. She didn't want Asher battling the fiendish count.
"It appears I have little choice but to go to war. I doubt the ignominy of being defeated by an ostrich will halt Dracul for long."
Jane gently caressed his face, worry shrouding her soul like a damp towel. "I have brought trouble to your door. He wants to hurt my father by making me his bride. I am so sorry, Asher. I wanted to make your undead life better, not worse. I wanted you to be happy, not hunting someone like the dark fiend of the night!"
"No, Jane, it's not just you. Dracul wants to strike at me. I always knew the night would come when Dracul would take his revenge."
"Revenge for what?"
"I burned his second wife to death after she attacked a school of children in France. He has never forgiven me for that. Or for the scar I gave him when I attacked him with holy water over forty years ago."
Jane nodded, remembering the count's angry words. But then she clasped her husband's face between her palms, pleading, "You can't fight him. It's too dangerous."
"I have no choice, Jane."
Knowing it was true, her eyes filled with tears. "Then I will help."
Asher looked affronted. "Over my dead body."
His tone irritated her. "Your point being?" she asked coolly.
He scowled at first, but when she smiled, he followed suit. "Graveyard humor?" he asked.
She shrugged. "It's only appropriate. I am a Van Helsing."
"Don't remind me," he said stiffly. "It's something I seemed to have forgotten."
She wanted to be angry at his answer, but she was merely weary, the weight of the world crushing down on her small shoulders. "You still doubt my loyalty," she said.
Catching a fleeting glimpse of her pain at his callous words, Asher relented. "Jane, you are what you are. Just as I am. I cannot step back now and regret roads not taken, journeys I did not travel. What you see is what I have been. Just as Dracul is. He was born of evil, and he has bequeathed evil to the world. We can't help being what Fate created us. You are a Van Helsing, the scourge of vampirekind, and I am a master vampire. Yet, somehow… as the nights pass by, the importance of that decided difference seems to matter less and less."
Jane nodded vigorously, hiding a smile. Her husband's distaste for her was lessening! "Tonight we are united in a cause, our similarities binding us. Therefore, you must use me and my family connections to help you. I am a hunter. He is a vampire."
"It's too dangerous for mortals, even Van Helsings," he replied.
He turned to leave. He had to go, and soon. His mouth was dry, his groin filling with heat whenever he saw his disheveled wife, half lying upon her bed. Her cheeks were flushed a becoming coral, and the tips of her breasts were peeking out from beneath her nightgown, a temptation for mortals and immortals alike. Her long hair had come undone and hung in a silken waterfall down her back and shoulders. Asher shuddered, his breathing becoming heavy. His voluptuous wife was made for loving, and her blood was rich and sweet.
Noting her husband's heated glance, Jane began to unbutton her gown, watching his face. She had almost been made a bride of the foul fiend of the underworld. She would have been lost to Asher forever. She wanted him now with a ferocity she had never felt. "I don't want to lose you, Asher. Never!"
Asher clenched his fists, fighting the desire that had been eating him since he'd tasted not only Jane's blood, but her passion for him. She had fired his hunger to ravenousness, to where he desired a never-ending banquet where he would glut himself on his wife for eternity, love her night after night. For the past few days he had driven himself crazy with dreams about her pale, freckled breasts, and her thatch of curly brown hair. He had thought constantly about driving his sex, along with his fangs, deep within her.
"I must go. To track him. The trail grows cold."
Jane shoved her nightgown down past her shoulders, revealing the creamy globes of her breasts, the freckles speckling around the nipples. "Stay a while," she urged. Asher had to stay with her tonight. As strong and able as her husband was, she feared he was no match for the crafty, corrupt Count Dracul. Tomorrow she would enlist the help of her family without Asher's knowledge. She knew exactly how he felt about the Van Helsings: Her arrogant husband would rather drink dirt than accept her family's help. But they were the only way to ensure that Asher remained with her, not put in a coffin for good.
Again, the vampire-fighting skills she had abhorred for most of her life made her happy. She would use them to the very best of her ability to save her husband and the world from Count Dracul. She would put her whole heart into it, and she would succeed. Love would find a way.
Asher didn't know when it had happened, but he knew that he had developed an affinity for freckles. His wife had the most beautiful breasts in the world. Breasts that should be worshipped nightly, and he was just the vampire to do it.
He shook his head, full of lusty hunger. Yet he knew where his duty lay. He needed to track Dracul before the trail became cold. He should back out the doorway right this minute, ignoring the lovely, luscious feast before him. He nodded once. Yes, he could do that. He was a master vampire, and master of his fate.
"I don't want you right now," he stated, a bit too emphatically to be believed by anyone.
Jane stood on her knees and shoved her nightgown away, revealing her soft thighs and thatch of brownish curls, glistening with her body's response to his nearness.
Asher gasped, seeing that his wife was already wet for him and he hadn't even touched her yet. He growled. He wanted to devour her. To throw her onto the bed and sink into her until he lost himself. "I am a master vampire and master of my own fate," he repeated. He would leave before this tempting seductress seduced him. "No, I don't want you even a tiny bit."
"Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much," Jane replied teasingly. She lay back on the bed, her body a thing of primal beauty. She beckoned him with her pale, speckled arms.
Asher stared, mesmerized, repeating to himself over and over that he was a master vampire, but the lust within him became a beast. It raged at him to mate. With a cry of frustration, he shoved his breeches to his knees and threw himself atop his wife.
Jane moaned as she took his weight, and spread her legs wide to help him penetrate her. His heated hardness made her feel complete, and she took him tightly within her.
Inside his wife's moist, hot heat, Asher felt at home. He felt like a conqueror of worlds. His wife fit him like a glove, and she made him feel like he could move mountains. Her passion burned and warmed him, recalling to his mind long-ago days in the sun. Her breasts, so plump and firm, tempted him to partake, and he suckled and licked them, enjoying the small moaning sounds his wife made. Her body moved beneath him; her arms held him tight.
Jane cried out in sheer joy as she felt the pulsating strength of Asher within her. He thrust and thrust again and again while his tongue and lips savored her breasts. She loved the way he moved inside her, his buttocks taut, his arm muscles rigid. She loved the way his flesh felt so slick and hard beneath her hands.
Her husband bit gently on her nipples, creating havoc below. Jane felt her stomach muscles clenching, and bright white lights streaked behind her closed eyes. The white lights were like bursting stars, and she felt her climax building like a force of nature. Soon she would soar again.
Asher felt his wife's body going rigid as she crested, tiny ripples drawing him deeper into her hot, wet depths. She screamed out his name, "Asher! Oh, Asher my love!"
Growling hungrily, he stared into her eyes, which were heavy-lidded with passion's fires. "I want to feed on you," he begged, his throat hoarse with the force of his passion. He had never wanted anything more than to mate with his wife in this ancient vampire tradition, to make her his own completely.
Enthralled, Jane nodded as Asher licked her breast and sucked it deep into his mouth. He bit down gently, and she screamed as the brief stab of pain turned to blinding pleasure. Another intense orgasm shook her. Choruses of white lightning were exploding in her brain, zinging here, there, and everywhere.
Asher drank his wife's delicious blood, reveling in its spicy uniqueness. Never before had blood been so sweet. Never before had he felt so complete as he did feeding off Jane, his body joined to hers. They were one, finally bound together as it should be.
"Mine! Mine!" he cried out. No one else would know Jane Van Helsing's sweet essence or her core. He might not love her, exactly, but no one else would have her. He might not have wanted what he'd got at first, but he had got what he wanted. Suddenly the waves of his desire caught him, drawing him to the razor's edge. He threw back his head and howled, pumping, climaxing violently as his hot seed filled her body.
Reluctantly he quit feeding, not wanting to take too much. Gently closing the wound on her breast, he tenderly laid his head against her forehead. Nothing must happen to his wife. He would keep her safe, no matter what.
Jane smiled faintly. What an award-winning performance, she thought. Well, she could certainly say that in the heat of the night they had set the sheets aflame, silken chariots of fire. Her husband was truly a man for all seasons. It could be the best years of our lives, she thought, if only he would give an inch—well, a mile—and admit he didn't regret their marriage now. Yes, it would be so sweet to hear terms of endearment from him. Those would be like the sound of music.
Running her fingers through his burnished hair, she sighed. Hell would freeze over first? Had it?
"I'm so glad you didn't want me even a little bit," she remarked smugly.
"Maddening minx," he responded.
"Should we buy Lucifer a heavy winter cape?"
"Jane…" Asher warned. He didn't like having his words thrown back in his face. "You might be pushing your luck with me."
"I could push something else," she replied impishly.
"Jane, Jane, what am I to do with you?"
"Cherish me," she whispered, suddenly serious.
Asher glanced down into his wife's silver-green eyes, feeling himself drown in their divine depths.
"Oh, Asher—how I wish I were beautiful like your other lovers were," she whispered wistfully.
Asher knew he had the power to deliver his wife an almost mortal blow. He'd done it too many times already. Tenderly, he pushed back a strand of her hair from her cheek. "'Nothing is beautiful from every point of view,'" he said.
Jane cocked her head. "Horace?" she asked.
He grinned. "Do you never miss a quote? You must be the best-read lady in England—and one of the most lovely," he said. He leaned back to stare at her pale naked breasts, gently rounded belly and soft white thighs. He even believed his own words.
Jane's eyes filled with tears as she laid her head on her husband's chest. Asher cared, and he thought her body was lovely—for now, that was enough. Within minutes she fell asleep, a self-satisfied, sated smile upon her face.
His wife sleeping like the dead, Asher tenderly pulled the covers over her and left to speak with Renfield. He had plans to make, and a vampire to track before dawn's early light.