Perfidia took a long draw on her cigarette, awaiting my response to the puzzle she'd just presented. Saying she'd always ruled my future by creating my past! What kind of arrogant nonsense was that? She was merely taking advantage of Pandora's absence to be the queen: the Queen of Swords, who did sat in the top position-representing The Present-of those tarot cards that were hanging a fraction of an inch from the wall.
Billy, too, was still pinioned there. He resembled a sacrificed Christ held to the Cross by invisible nails, only naked. His dark eyes widened as the vampire stepped toward me. Heartening as it was to witness this signal that he felt some affection for me-feared for my safety, perhaps-I sensed Perfidia had rendered him mute.
"Cat got your tongue, puss?" the slender demon teased.
Her gossamer gown, the color of blood, fluttered as though a thousand butterflies were trapped beneath it. I interpreted this as a rising of her agitation-a power I didn't want to deal with. But once again I had no choice.
This time, we were truly at her mercy. I sensed whatever mission Pandora and Pink were on would keep them away-by Perfidia's design. It occurred to me, too, that the tarot spread lingering mysteriously near the wall was more the result of this witch's manipulation than any punches Pandora may have pulled when she dealt the colorful cards.
"You're catching on," Perfidia jeered, now standing only two feet away. "But what I'm about to reveal-what that goody-goody Pandora would protect you from-will affect you long after those cards have crumbled to dust. Long after Pandora ceases to be, for that matter."
My insides tightened. Pandora, as the oldest and most powerful of the Sisters of Samaria, had no intention of bringing herself to an end-or letting anyone else mess with her, either! Yet here stood her partner, foretelling a time when she herself would reign. I understood more fully now why Pandora called the reversed Queen of Swords the Bitch of Swords! Turned upside down, she wielded that weapon without thought of her cruelty's consequences. She presumed the truth was hers to reveal, but at what price?
"Just say it," I rasped, backing away from those frigid eyes. "I'm a grown woman who's made her own way in this world. Nothing you reveal can change who I am, or what I'll do when you've finished meddling with Billy and me."
Her nasty laughter filled my little room. "You're a bigger fool than I thought-and that's in the cards, too, isn't it?" she taunted. "That Queen of Wands might represent you-just as the naive and dreamy-eyed Queen of Cups is Pandora-but having that Fool reversed indicates your new journey with Tripplehorn will take you nowhere. And Justice reversed, covering Pandora, says there's not a damn thing she can do about it!"
My heart pounded weakly in my chest, and the room began to feel extremely tight. Was this vampire sucking all the air from it? Just as she'd sucked the lifeblood from so many of the other orphans raised here? I'd never been one for death wishes, but I had a dark moment wondering why this malevolent creature hadn't offed me when I was young, too. Lord knows she'd had enough cruel, critical things to say about me over my lifetime.
The response to my unasked question smoldered in her feline eyes.
"You know who you are, Alexandrea. You're just too much a coward to admit it." Smoke curled upward from her flared nostrils, again reminding me of a dragon about to devour some poor feckless heroine in tales of yore. But there it was-my inclination to escape into a fictional state whenever reality felt too difficult. Orphans spun entire lives from threads of their wishful imaginations, and despite my legal degree, I was still a little lost girl at times.
Perfidia pivoted, apparently bored; the cat who insisted her captive mouse play along until the bitter end. She turned to study Billy then. Against that wall he still hung, naked and spread-eagle, pinned by the vampire's invisible fetters. "Do you want me, Billy?" she purred, stepping toward him with a sinuous swish of her deep red skirts.
Tripplehorn snorted. "Bitch! Why would any man-"
His head swiveled with the force of her slap, even though she remained several feet in front of him.
"Time you learned about humoring older women, stupid goose," she sneered, and then she snapped her fingers in the air. "Justin and Jeremy had the same sort of attitude when I chose them, but now they're the perfect servants. The perfect lovers. If you're smart-if you truly love my Andrea-you'll model yourself after their exemplary behavior. Right, boys?"
The blond twins appeared from out of nowhere, their eyes fixed on Perfidia as though they owed her their very life. And, it occurred to me, they'd been spared the same way I had. Without a word, they bowed in unison and their silken saris slithered down to puddle at their feet. They were already rock hard, pulsing with the desire to please her.
"Kneel," the vampire whispered.
One of the twins went to his knees immediately in front of Perfidia, while the other approached on hands and knees to act as her footstool. The lithe vampire lifted her leg, revealing her nudity as the long skirt parted, and then placed her foot in the middle of her slave's back.
"Lick me," she commanded.
The blond before her approached with reverent eagerness, his eyes closed as his lips met her skin. The tip of his tongue made long, sensuous lines up and down her inner thigh, teasing her just to the point where her tight, pale curls met the crevice of her leg. Up and over he went, laving her in a semicircle that arched above her mound, to then lavish his attention on the other thigh.
An intake of breath told me Billy was reacting the way Perfidia had hoped. While his dark eyes and hair accentuated the stubborn refusal written on his face-the intent to remain unaffected by what he saw-the rise of his cock betrayed him. After all, a beautiful woman stood facing him with her legs parted while she took her pleasure from another man.
Perfidia's expression remained cool and emotionless as she watched Tripplehorn's erection point toward the ceiling.
"This could be you, Billy," she said in a sibilant whisper that came from all corners of the room. "Say the word, and you could be serving me the way Jeremy is."
"Forget it!" he spat. "I won't be a slave to any woman!"
His yelp punctuated that statement, and the flinch of his suspended body told me Perfidia had slapped him somewhere much more painful this time. Billy gasped, writhing in his invisible bonds.
The blond twins stifled their laughter, and Jeremy reached up to part Perfidia's sex lips with his fingers. It was no secret he enjoyed the freedoms his slavery afforded: his pale face grew pink with expectation as his hard, slender cock jutted between his mistress's legs.
Perfidia abruptly cuffed him, which sent him sprawling backwards on the floor. "Taking liberties has always been your downfall, fool," she growled, pointing a pallid finger at him. "Assume the position for the whipping you so richly deserve."
Jeremy paled, yet his face took on the taut expectation of one whose fear acted as an aphrodisiac. For a moment he seemed ready to protest-to beg for mercy-but that unwavering digit made him think better of it.
"Before you present yourself, fetch the cane. Crawling, like the worthless worm you are."
"Yes, mistress," came the strained reply, and Jeremy slithered like a snake toward my hearth.
I had no idea how that slender switch came to be among my fireplace tools, but my insides clenched as I watched the blond cross the floor on his belly again, bearing his instrument of discipline. Perfidia's smile curved like the cusp of an ill-begotten moon as she took it from him, and then glanced over at Billy.
"You might recall the night we met, Mr. Tripplehorn, and my references to the discipline I maintain in this household," she said, casually smacking the curve of the cane against her hand. "What you are about to witness shall be a lesson to you about who shall rule and who shall serve, now that you've decided my Andrea interests you. She, too, will expect nothing less than perfection and absolute submission from her mate."
Billy's glance told me he wasn't believing a word of this, yet the darker pink of his cheeks belied some doubts-and his eyes widened with the sudden smack of wood against flesh. Jeremy had doubled over with his forehead on the floor and his slender ass in the air, to receive Perfidia's first stroke. Another followed it, leaving a stripe that ripened into a slash of pink crisscrossing the first one.
I stepped forward with the next raising of that cane, but Perfidia's glare froze me in place. "Your intervention will only earn him more stripes, Andrea. Better get control of your emotions, so you can handle it when it's Billy's balls that jiggle beneath my whip."
As though I would fall for that one! Tripplehorn would no more submit to any woman's domination than… Well, he was still pinioned against the wall, naked, wasn't he? Something told me to keep my mouth shut as Perfidia calmly resumed her disciplinary display.
Whack!…whack! As the slender rod bit into Jeremy's flesh, I sensed he was trembling as much from excitement as from the burning of his backside.
"Have you learned your lesson, Jeremy?" Perfidia quizzed.
The blond quivered. "Perhaps a couple more, mistress. It was very presumptuous of me to touch you without asking permission," he rasped.
The vampire raised her cane…remained poised to strike for countless agitating seconds…and then finished with three rapid cracks that resounded in the small room, along with her slave's single whimper.
"Now-return the cane to its place, and resume my licking without anything but your tongue touching me," Perfidia said in a low voice. "I know how you love to caress me, Jeremy, but we must serve as an example to our new boy, mustn't we? You may walk upright this time."
The blond nodded, and as he replaced the cane he stole a glance at his backside. Those welts had to sting like nothing I had ever experienced-and wasn't the humiliation surely worse? Yet Jeremy appeared…relieved. As uplifted as a sinner newly absolved from all stains upon his soul.
From there, the display only grew more difficult to watch: Perfidia snapped her fingers and pointed to the floor, demanding that the chastised Jeremy become her foot rest while his brother got the honor of pleasuring her. Justin masked his puppylike eagerness by clasping his arms around his own waist, so as not to succumb to temptation as his twin had. Beneath her, in a most worshipful manner, he extended his tongue so that only its tip touched her skin.
My own legs trembled at the sight. Much as I detested Perfidia's tactics, I envied her slender beauty and the way her slaves adored her. Justin's expression was downright beatific as he ran a damp path up her skin, ever so slowly…following his brother's arch above her curly thatch to titillate the other leg, which bent at a right angle. Her slit was open and fully exposed, a mere inch in front of his lips. Was it my imagination, or did the entire room smell of sex?
Billy, too, seemed unable to ignore the sight before him. His cock-so much larger and more urgent than either of the twins'-pumped the air in front of him, ready to shoot. My God, here I stood in my own bedroom, where three randy men gritted their teeth against imminent climax, at the mercy of a woman who sipped serenely at her cigarette holder. The fluttering inside me became more than I could stand, and I furtively slipped my hand toward my inner thigh. Since Perfidia was busy holding court, and her subjects could only gaze at her with their extreme need, no one would notice if I- "Don't you dare touch yourself, you disgusting girl!"
The words snared me like a lariat, and all eyes went to my incriminating hand. All breathing was suspended-my own included-as Perfidia glared at my extended fingers.
"Come here, Andrea," she continued in that insidious whisper. "You're going to touch me instead. You're going to finger my slit…caress my flesh until it burns with need…and then you're going to flick my clit with your fingertips, and hold me open so Justin can drive his tongue deep inside me. Now do it!"
My body lurched forward but my mind called a halt. "I'm not your-I don't owe you any-"
"You owe me your very life, Andrea, and don't you ever forget it!" Her face tightened with the insistence of being obeyed, and I saw a flash of fangs. "If you expect to attain that fairy tale life with Mr. Throbbing Cock over there, you've got to earn it. Now come over here and bring me off. Justin likes the feel of my juice all over his face."
The blond's obsequious grin sickened me, yet I was no stranger to the whims and ways of the serving staff-or the women who controlled them. It was another matter altogether to pleasure Perfidia, however: all my life, the three Sisters had made no secret of their sexuality, but I'd never been required to participate in their games. It waslike growing up with three wayward mothers, and the very thought of touching this bitch in such an intimate way made me recoil.
"Squeamish, are we? Feigning modesty, or perhaps even morality?" An evil chuckle escaped her, which sent the smoke billowing from her nose. "Out here beyond Redemption, we are all defined by our depravity-as well you know, Alexandrea. So if you expect to escape to any sort of normal life-whatever the hell that is-you'll do as I say. I could reveal a few of your secrets just by showing Billy your clothes, couldn't I? Then we'd see how long he stayed around."
My heart slammed against my breast bone. Bad enough that she'd used my full name again instead of just the feminine half of it. She'd also planted a seed of doubt that had Billy glancing toward my armoire.
"Billy, don't you believe a word-"
"He can't hear you," Perfidia said with a snicker. And indeed, a bewildered look overtook Tripplehorn's face as he awaited my explanation. "Now, get over here and show him what an eager, versatile lover you are…let him watch you fondling me until he's writhing against the wall and shooting cum all over us."
The witch! Now she'd rendered him deaf as well as defenseless, helplessly hanging on that wall to watch us…anticipating his own humiliation, no doubt. Still grinning maliciously, Perfidia closed her eyes and exuded a tension that again stilled everything in the room.
From a distance came an indistinct tinkling, like delicate pipe chimes in the wind. Recognition dawned on the identical faces of Justin and Jeremy, but I stood as though spellbound, listening while the sound came closer…closer…and was then at my own door. Transported by yet another invisible force, slender sections of tubular metal entered the room, gleaming as black as the magic that moved them. As we all watched, the pieces of pipe did an intricate dance in the air. They clicked and pinged in an alluring rhythm that held me in thrall-until I sucked air.
As mysteriously as they'd appeared, the black bars suddenly came together in the shape of a cage. The four sides shrank to the size of a dry pint box, and then expanded to fit the four walls of my room before becoming a crate that would kennel a large dog. It landed on my floor with an ominous thump.
I swallowed hard. For years I'd heard tales of this portable prison and those who'd learned lessons of respect and discipline inside it, but the actual sight of it made my skin crawl. Someone was going to become Perfidia's latest slave. It was merely a matter of who, and why.
"You've noticed, I'm sure, that the cage has no gate," she remarked offhandedly.
Her silvery eyes narrowed as she looked at me, and I knew she could hear each frenzied thought and anticipate each futile move I might try. Judging from another flash of her incisors, Perfidia was feeling the need to feed. She could hear every pulse in the room, sense every shallow breath, and the predator within her had already chosen its prey. Only a matter of time before she pounced.
"Come over here, Alexandrea," she repeated softly. "Give me what I want."
I was awfully short on options. Here in this room, where one slave served as her foot rest while the other begged to pleasure her and a third man was hanging helplessly beside a suspended tarot spread, I was the last mouse left for this ravenous cat to catch. While I hated to cave in-hated the way she would ruin my future no matter how much humiliation I endured to humor her-I didn't like the looks of that cage, either.
"Here, kitty, kitty, kitty," she quietly coaxed. "See my cream? It tastes like freedom, little girl, and these three boys can't wait to watch you lap it up."
As my thoughts whirled, it registered that she'd changed her tune-from a fingering to a licking-yet deep down her siren song still sang of my doom. Her slender hands moved with an entrancing grace, one of them to cup her mound while the other gently brushed Justin aside. I watched spellbound, fighting the pull of her power, as she raised her soft, fleshy cape to reveal the intimate skin that glistened with her desire. A single drop dribbled down her leg and Justin lunged for it.
"Down, boy!" she barked, and the errant twin retreated behind his brother's bent form. "You've tasted my nectar many times, and now we're letting Alexandrea take her turn. Because she'll do anything to be free with Billy. And because she's secretly a dirty little girl who craves what she should never taste…who wants forbidden fruit, so we can punish her and cleanse her of her sins. A bride must be pure to enter into the sacrament of marriage, after all."
Her logic was as skewed as her tone was coaxing, and I heard the danger behind her alluring words. Without my mind's consent, my legs moved me forward. I couldn't pull my gaze away from that single drop of juice dribbling slowly down her thigh; couldn't inhale the scent of her deeply enough-couldn't name all the lovely shades of rose I saw in those folds as her quickened breathing took control of mine. I sensed Billy was watching in horrified fascination as I went down on my knees and began to lap at her leg.
Like a parched nomad at a desert oasis I went at her, heedless of her needs because I had to satisfy my own just to survive another moment. Her hands found my hair and I lunged upward with my tongue, lapping frantically at her flesh as I parted her silken lips with my fingers. Already the wickedness had insinuated itself: one taste and I was a goner, so now I shamelessly sated my own lustful hunger. A voice-Perfidia's voice-filled my head with purrs of encouragement, until I realized the vampire, too, was caught in the throes of passion. Where she had stood coolly open, displaying herself to the twins and Billy, she was burning like a wildfire out of control as my hands roamed her chilly flesh and my mouth ignited her.
Perfidia bucked against my face, and with a strangled cry she wrenched herself away from me. She sprang toward Billy, who was writhing on the wall with an erection resembling a tall, purple-headed mushroom. Impaling herself on his cock, the vampire let out a wild cry and rode him like the raging bull he was, rocking hard against his body as her head lolled back. Like dogs, Justin and Jeremy scuttled over to catch the drippings-likely to be a feast, as the wetness squelched with each thrust of the lovers.
I watched in dawning horror, wiping the wetness from my face. Perfidia's blood-colored gown shifted and shook, veiling the lower parts of their bodies as they shuddered into the first stage of climax. But nothing could mask the fangs that sprang between her lips. That bitch was going to sate her lust on my Billy and then suck his blood!
When I sprang at her, I was repelled by an invisible wall. I triedagain, scrambling toward the rutting pair to deliver Billy from his doom. But once more I struck the barrier she'd erected from air, and her satanic magic sent that damn cage flying over in pieces to reconstruct itself around me. I cringed as those white incisors flashed, for once Tripplehorn grunted with his first spurt, he'd be lost in a climax that might cost him his life.
Perfidia went for his neck.
Billy, caught up in convulsions and those invisible manacles, cried out. For what seemed like forever, the parasite riding him clung to his jugular. I could only mewl like an abandoned cat, clutching the cold bars of my cage as my pulse raced along with my catastrophic thoughts.
Billy's eyes closed, and then his body stopped bucking. With a languorous sigh he slumped, and his head lolled to one side as Perfidia finally let him go. God, but he looked pale hanging there. As lifeless as Lucy Legg on the undertaker's table.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. Why had Perfidia killed him? I thought the Three P's had decided to let him stay here because he'd make them an exciting new playmate, but this bitch had taken matters into her own hands without her partners' consent. She climbed down and allowed the twins to lick her slit clean. After dismissing them with a flick of her hand, the vampire smoothed her gown into place as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
My knuckles grew white as I gripped the bars of my little prison. "You goddamn, whoring-"
"That's no way to talk to your mother, Alexandrea."
"-thief! Stealing the man you knew-you knew…you…" I blinked rapidly to clear my eyes, not believing what I'd just heard. Perfidia was too caught up in her deception to be playing straight with me. Just trying to drive the final nail into my proverbial coffin by insinuating we two could be related in any way.
I shuddered-my body's reaction to a situation my mind didn't yet grasp. "You just can't stand it that Billy loves me, despite learning I live in this hell hole with you three-"
"Loves you, does he? We'll see about that."
With a snap of her fingers, she brought him around. My poor heart stood still as Billy's eyes opened, and then he abruptly inhaled. He still looked limp as a rag doll, but he was focusing-taking in the room and the two of us. Recognition reached his pale face.
"Billy, my sweet," Perfidia crooned, reaching over to chuck him under the chin. "Did you enjoy that fucking?"
"God yes, it was-"
"Better than the way Alexandrea gives it to you?"
When his wary glance came my way, I saw those brown eyes swirling like stirred coffee in a cup. The vampire still held him in her thrall, yet Tripplehorn's words cut me deep.
"Why, of course it was. How could any woman possibly compare to you, Perfidia?" he murmured dreamily.
The bitch smiled, sipping her cigarette. "Perhaps we can give her lessons, you and I. Would it give you a thrill, servicing mother and daughter at the same time, dear boy?"
There it was again, that insinuation I couldn't allow to stand unchallenged. "Don't believe a thing she's saying, Billy! She's up to her old tricks again, deceiving us both!" I declared loudly.
Yet my voice wavered. Something deep inside me was piecing together odd bits of recollection-glimpses of a past I didn't recall but somehow knew to be true.
Perfidia watched, reading the rush of my thoughts. I clenched the iron bars of a cage that had shrunk each time I'd spoken out against her, denying there could be any connection between myself and this vampire I'd never liked or trusted. It seemed, at that awful moment, that my only defense was a blatant offense.
"Well, if you were my mother-which I seriously doubt, considering your immortal damnation as a vampire-then who was my father? I demanded. "Whoever he was, you must've caught him up in your thrall to get him to-"
"No, Judge Legg's always been a randy sort. Ruts anything that's warm and wet," she replied with a shrug. "Which is how Miss Lucy got knocked up. Which was why she had to die."
Once again my mind did a stutter-step at all this impossible information. It was outrageous of this vampire to say she'd birthed me, but to assert that the magistrate was my father! Why, that old goat- My heart shriveled. When I'd seen Lucy pinned to the wall of St. Mary's, urging Billy Tripplehorn to climax inside her, I'd suspected she was trapping him with an inconvenient pregnancy-and I'd guessed Harold Legg had something to do with her death. That the judge had perhaps-perhaps-gotten her with child matched my darkest opinions of him, even though such an abomination was a crime I didn't wish to think about.
But to believe the magistrate had sired me…with this insidious bitch of porcelain skin and platinum hair…well, it was more than I could stomach. I vomited, while my mind reeled with the most sickening information I'd received since my early childhood. All my life I'd believed I was an orphan-born to a destitute mother, or a woman caught in the crossfire of misbegotten passions, whose lover wanted nothing to do with me. And while that story was sad and difficult to accept, it sounded a hell of a lot better than what was being passed offas the truth right now.
I glared at Perfidia, determined not to cave in. "You're hundreds of years old, and you're a vampire-undead! So how could you have conceived me?" I challenged.
The ghoul chuckled, clearly enjoying the shock she'd caused. "A faulty assumption on your part, my dear. Young as she may appear, it was Pink who created me-took my life as I knew it, while Harold and I were newlyweds. She said it was the scent of conception that drove her beyond control. She knew you were in there, if just barely, and that with a constant supply of blood my body would support you until you were born. So the evening after my funeral, she dug me up and brought me around with a massive infusion of her own youthful fluid, until I learned to feed on Pandora's orphans. Ironic, isn't it, that a bitch in heat like me can be a babe in the woods, as vampires go."
She laughed at her own joke. In that airless room where I was being bombarded with too much truth, it sounded like the manic cackle of a witch. "Not that I believe any of this," I said in a thin voice, "but why would Miss Pink do such a thing? She always makes things happen to her own advantage, so-"
"Because she CAN!" came Perfidia's raucous reply. Then she eyed me slyly, taking another draw from that infernal cigarette. Didn't that thing ever go out?
"And because she'd vowed to wreak havoc on the magistrate," the vampire added with a satisfied smile. "Seems he convicted her mother of whoring-which was her sole means of supporting her children-so Pink figured the loss of his own wife and unborn child as partial payment for the death of her mama."
"Revenge."
"Precisely. And nobody wreaks revenge like a pretty young thing with fangs."
"Is that why you attacked Billy? Because I 'owe' you for all the years you let me live, and for allowing me to pursue-" I stopped rather than reveal my profession, even though Tripplehorn was still in a stupor. "NOT that I believe you're my mother, of course."
Perfidia snorted, causing smoke to spurt from her nostrils. "Silly fool, I drank Billy's blood because I wanted him! Because he's gorgeous! But what I'm about to do next comes under the heading of Mother Knows Best."
"Pulling rank," I muttered, clenching the iron bars like I wanted to grip Perfidia's neck. "As though caging me like a damned animal weren't enough. Why am I not surprised?"
Her smile grew more catlike as she snapped her fingers to rouse Billy from his fog. "Oh, you'll be surprised, all right."
She was walking-or rather, gliding in that vampire way she had-toward my armoire, holding Tripplehorn's attention with her steady gaze. "Do you know whose clothes are in here, Billy, my sweet?"
He grinned, a besotted schoolboy answering Teacher's question. "Why, Andrea's, of course. This is her room, and that's where she keeps her dresses."
My pulse was pounding so hard, knowing where this would lead, that I could barely hear their conversation. I had to wonder how much of it Perfidia herself was directing, for she could read people's thoughts and then coerce their responses.
"That's right-as far as it goes," she replied. Then she unlatched the doors and swung them open with a dramatic flourish. "But what's this? Behind these outmoded, rather frumpy gowns why-here's a man's tweed suit jacket! And several pairs of flannel trousers! And an overcoat!"
Perfidia pivoted, her triumphant glance flitting my way before she focused on Billy again. "What does this mean, sweetheart? Do you recognize them?"
"You goddamn-"
But Billy's wounded, incredulous expression shut me up. He squirmed against his invisible bonds, whimpering like a frustrated pup. "She has a husband," he rasped. "She led me to believe she's unmarried, but-"
He suddenly dropped from the wall to land with a thump on the floor.
"She's been deceiving you, all right," the vampire said as she wagged her finger at him, "but perhaps if you come closer, you'll know where you've seen these clothes before."
My wrath made the room burn from behind a red haze-the sort that comes over a bull being teased by a matador. Billy still looked pale from losing so much blood, and he walked with a wince after landing so hard, but I predicted a quick recovery. He'd be running for his life, if Perfidia had her way.
"Billy, she's tricking you!" I yelped. "After we get out of here-if you'll let me explain-"
But he was already fingering the front of the overcoat, studying the glove Perfidia had pulled from its pocket. A panic came over me and I couldn't breathe, as though a noose were tightening around my neck. And it might as well have been, the way Billy Tripplehorn looked at me and then ran his finger along a pale stain I hadn't realized was there. He buried his face in the glove.
"Smells like sex, doesn't it?" the vampire inquired quietly. "And that unsightly white splotch on the coat, why, it reminds me of…dried cum."
Billy sucked air and turned to stare at me, the glove still near his nose. "Alex Moore, the lawyer," he said in a voice growing as taut as his bare body. "In the buggy coming from town-how long has HE lived here?"
I bit my lip, fighting tears. But of course Perfidia jumped right into the gap of distrust I'd just created.
"Ever since Alex-Andrea-got out of law school, actually," she replied. "And while I'm glad she rescued you from the clutches of that idiot Harry Legg, you should know what you've gotten yourself into, before it's too late. Would you marry a woman who masquerades as a man?"
The blood drained from my face. For countless, gawdawful moments Billy Tripplehorn stared at me, his eyes dark with doubt. Years in the courtroom facing down the magistrate had trained me not to break my gaze, yet I couldn't deny my deception. "If you'll let me explain, Billy-"
"If you want to leave, after she's treated you so indecently, I'll certainly understand." The vampire's gown fluttered with the quick raising of her arm to point toward the door. "Fetch your clothes downstairs, if you like. I love you too much to hold you here against your will."
I didn't know whether to cry or vomit again, listening to Perfidia perform such melodrama with all her immortal-immoral-charm. Surely he realized she was playing us both for fools, one against the other! Billy'd once admitted to thinking with his dick, but living among three female vampires had been a short course in sexual treachery even he had learned a lesson from. Hadn't he?
And yet, who was I to deny my part in this deception? I'd brought him here under false pretenses, after all. "I love you, too, Billy," I said, realizing it was the weakest defense I'd ever pleaded. "Please believe I had my reasons for-"
But he walked out. Left the gloomy little room without a backward glance.
I can't really say I blamed him.
Perfidia's smile defied description. "Isn't he just the handsomest man you ever saw?" she asked lightly. She started to close the armoire, but then shoved its doors wide again, as though to taunt me with the sight of its contents.
"Stay right where you are, Andrea, until I return for our little mother-daughter chat. Or not."