Read Online A Dark Heart by Margaret Foxe - Free Book Online Page B

delicate-featured, with what novels called
alabaster skin, she looked nearly the same as she'd looked when she was
seventeen. Frozen in time. His Ana. Yet not his at all.
    If his blood had been singing before, now it was belting out a damned
Wagnerian opera. He didn't even bother to hide his eyes and fangs. She needed a
good reminder of the monster she'd created, if only to make her keep her distance.
And a shameful part of him wanted to make her suffer, just a little,
even after all this time.
    Her eyes widened a little when she saw him, and a look of joy passed over
her expressive features, making his heart leap in his chest. But the joy was quickly
chased away by a look of grim concern. He couldn't quite blame her. She'd not
seen him in nearly a year, not since she'd shown up at Sasha Romanov's
townhouse with a gunshot wound through her side. He'd nearly succumbed to
temptation and betrayed their illicit bond to Brightlingsea by pouncing on her
that day. Her leaking blood had tempted him as he'd never been tempted. He'd
known he could never trust himself around her again, so he’d avoided her at all
costs.
    Over the course of their year apart, especially in the past couple of
months when she'd been out of the city, his condition had visibly deteriorated
– quite severely, if her deepening expression of concern was any
indication.
    "Elijah!" she said breathlessly.
    Just his name on her tongue sent a bolt of sexual desire through his
loins, both separate from his bloodlust and inextricably entwined with it. He
couldn't even tell where one appetite ended and the other began anymore.
    He’d been with women before his transformation. After what O’Connor had
done to him, he’d not expected to ever have the needs of a normal man, but as
he’d grown into adulthood, he’d discovered he was not immune to the opposite
sex. It had come as something of a relief, to be honest, but it had also been a
bit daunting, for the opposite sex wasn’t immune to him either, even with his
Welding eye and crippled leg. He’d categorically refused to ever consider going
to a prostitute, as so many men in his position did without a qualm, but he’d
found willing women enough when he felt the need for bed sport. There had been
a reason O’Connor had pursued him so assiduously as a child, and it seemed the
beauty he’d inherited from his mother had never totally faded, despite his scars
and the passage of the years.
    But his past as a gutter whore never truly left him, even during those
brief encounters. He’d always left the beds of his women feeling vaguely
unclean and riddled with guilt. He’d never shaken off the sense that any sexual
desire he felt was somehow dirty and shameful – that he was unworthy of
feeling such urges altogether, let alone foisting them upon another, no matter
how willing his partner was.
    When Lady Christiana had come to London all of those years ago, he’d discovered
a whole new universe of anguish. He’d never felt so overwhelmingly attracted to
a woman, and his feelings of guilt and shame had been just as overwhelming.
She’d looked just like the dead girl that still lived in his heart, for one. To
be attracted to her seemed a perversion of the one good, clean memory he had of
his boyhood. And for another, Lady Christiana had been so young – or at
least he’d believed so at the time – barely old enough for her Society
debut. She’d been as fresh and bright as a newly minted golden guinea.
     That his cock had stirred and his pulse had leapt whenever she’d
entered a room and turned those eager green eyes in his direction had seemed so
wrong. That he’d begun to picture her face whenever he was with a woman was
even more iniquitous. It had reached the point that he’d had to stop taking
lovers and shove his base urges deep down inside altogether. He could think of
no other way to cope with his unbidden desire for the one woman he could never
have, not in a million lifetimes.
    She hadn’t