Blood Games (45 page)

She looked up swiftly, hoping that those Justus had set to guard her had not heard the sound. They reported everything to him, and it had become increasingly important to her that he should not learn how much anguish he had caused her. She waited, hardly breathing, for the sliver of light from the hall that would show the servant she had come to think of as her jailer. There had been a sound beyond the door, she knew it, a slithery sound as if something had slipped along the floor. For one panic-filled moment she feared that Justus had decided to visit her again, bringing her some new horror.

The door opened at last, the slice of light amber in the gloom. Olivia shrank back into the shadows, trying to make herself as small as possible, or invisible.

A dark-cloaked figure stepped into the room, and a voice she thought never to hear again said, “Olivia."

She dropped the scroll as she got to her feet. “Saint-Germain.” Slowly she came across the room toward him, her voice husky with fear. “How did you get here? You must leave at once, before they find you. Oh, my love, I've missed you so much."

He held out his arms to her, and wrapped her within his cloak, close to him, his face against her hair as she, in sudden fierceness, clung to him. “Olivia. Olivia.” With one hand he tilted her wet face up to him. “Olivia,” he said again as he kissed her with a strange, quiet passion drawn from the depths of his soul.

When she could speak again, her words came in impulsive little starts, spoken hardly above a whisper, and all the while her hands plucked nervously at his tunica, as if wanting to reassure herself that he was not the product of her imagination. “How did you get here? How did you know where to look for me? You mustn't stay. How did you get in? They'll hurt you if they find you. They'll tell Justus. Saint-Germain. Help me. Oh, my love, help me.” Without warning she started to cry, great ragged sobs wrenching out of her. His arms held her securely while the worst of her tears raged through her; then he lifted her easily and carried her across the room to the bed. As he walked, his heeled boots made a sharp report on the cold marble floor. When he had put her on the bed, he lay down beside her, his body close against her, his cloak spread over them both. He murmured quiet, endearing words to her while his small, beautiful hands smoothed the tears from her face.

"No,” she said at last, trying feebly to break away from him. “No."

"No?” he asked, kissing her eyelids. “By all the forgotten gods, Olivia, you are precious to me."

She winced as if in pain. “Don't. Don't say that.” Her voice had risen, and she quieted herself with an effort. There were those who were listening. He had to understand that. “Don't. If the guard finds us..."

"That's unlikely,” he murmured as he loosened the stolae she had knotted around her shoulders in a futile attempt to keep warm. “Your guard, by some curious happenstance, drank drugged wine tonight, and will not awake until morning.” He moved back far enough to get a clear look at her, and was secretly shocked by what he saw. Her face was thinner than ever, and there were new lines around her eyes and by her mouth that told more than words would of the suffering she had endured. There was a tightness in his chest when he spoke to her then, and though he tried to keep his words light, some of his anger and his concern colored them. “We have all night together, and there is nothing that the guards or Justus or the Emperor or Jupiter himself can do to stop us. I should have come earlier. I should have come when I found out where you were. I didn't want to take needless risks, but I see that I should have."

She put her hand to his lips. “No,” she said, barely audibly. “Be quiet. There may be others still up."

"I'm not a fool,” he reminded her gently. “No one else is awake. Only you and I.” His mouth touched hers, the open lips parting hers with gentle persistence. He pressed closer to her, feeling the lines of her body through the garments that separated them. “Olivia.” He had wanted her in all the days they had been apart, but now that he was beside her, his need was as sharp as steel within him.

"Saint-Germain,” she whispered, holding on to the last shreds of her resolution. “No, no, I can't. It's too hard, to love you, to have you with me, and then to have to subject myself to my husband. You know what he has done to me. I don't think I can stand this any longer, having your love when we can dare to be together, and then return to the demands that Justus makes of me. Don't ask it of me, my only, only love."

His lips grazed her neck. “I won't abandon you to your husband. I've told you that before. I won't. You must not ask that of me, Olivia."

"Then what am I to do?” she asked, feeling the full weight of her misery once more. “I can't continue this way. Each day is worse than the last, and sometimes I'm afraid I'll go mad. I haven't heard from my mother in years. Here I am surrounded by nothing but spies, who find my state amusing. There are only a few scrolls left in the library, and I've read each of them at least twice. Justus has left me nothing. Even the statues that used to be in the niches are gone. He says that I have no need of them. Saint-Germain, tell me. What am I to do?” This time she managed to hold her tears back.

"You must leave him. You must come to me. I've told you that for over a year.” His hands worked to untie her clothes as he spoke to her in the dark.

"But the Praetorians..."

"If every officer of every legion and guard of Rome were in pursuit of me, it could not possibly make a difference between us. I don't say that idly, Olivia. I will have you with me, if I have to drag you through Rome by your hair.” In token of this, he tugged at the pins that held her long hair in an untidy knot at her neck. Eagerly, slowly, he spread her hair over the rough pillow. “Listen to me, Olivia. You are part of me. Nothing in the world can change that, except the true death, and that has yet to touch me, though it's had almost two thousand years to do it.” He was working loose the fibula that held her palla at the shoulder. “We've been together too often, too long for you to be free of me.” His parted lips closed on hers again, less gently now as he felt his desire for her well within him. As their kiss lengthened and deepened, her breath quivered.

Then she pulled away, aching, her jaw tight. “I can't. My dearest Saint-Germain, forgive me, but I can't.” She tried to turn away from him, in the cradle of his arms. “Take what you need. I can do that, at least. It's what you must have.” She closed her eyes so she would not have to see the compassion in his face. “Don't torture me with false hope. It's too hard, Saint-Germain. I can't keep on this way with you. It's too painful when I have to return to...the other. I wish I were stronger..."

"You are strong,” he said, moving to look more clearly into her face. “How many women do you know who could survive what you have? Justus’ first wife is mad and his second dead. In spite of all that he does to you"—as he said it, rage pricked at him—"you have endured it. You haven't succumbed to his debauchery. You are sane. You are alive."

"No, Saint-Germain. Please...” She shook her head.

He took her face in his hands. “Do you mean that? Do you want me to do nothing more than take what you think I require and leave you? Here? To this? Is that sufficient for you?"

Olivia could not meet his penetrating eyes. “No. It's not enough. But what else dare I have?” It was more difficult than she had imagined to deny him. There was no choice, she reminded herself, as she had so many times in the past month.

"Perhaps,” he said in a low, caressing tone, “it could be enough for you. It would not be enough for me."

"It must be,” she whispered as she reached to touch his good, loving face.

"But it can't be. I am not like other men. You know that. That was why you accepted me at first.” With one finger he traced the line of her mouth. “I could never do to you what other men have done. Even if you desired it. Even if I desired it."

Hating herself for doing it, she braced her arm against his chest. “Saint-Germain, what can we hope for?"

If he understood her, he chose to interpret her words in another light. “It's true that I can no longer serve you as another man would, but there are compensations. Would you like to spend all the night in loving? In seeking fulfillment and release in new ways, each unique, each wholly satisfying? There are myriad kisses to shower on you, touching that will bring sweet fire to the inmost part of you. Think of exploring the limits of your desires without fatigue and without disappointment.” He moved the three stolae and the palla aside so that he could put his hand on the curve of her breast, an ardent, protective gesture that brought her out of the remote place of her mind where she had retreated from his concern and gentleness. “Whatever you desire, Olivia, for as long as you desire it, that I can do. My stamina is the same as your own. Have you forgotten that?” He bent to her lips again and this time she did not resist him, but lay passive beneath his demand. “Olivia,” he said at last, more with sadness than reproach.

"I'm afraid,” she said at last.

"Of me? After all this time?” He leaned above her, the muted glow of the oil lamp on the other side of the room touching the edge of his brow, the side of his nose, the curve of his mouth.

"I'm afraid of the things that I want.” Longing for him grew within her with sudden intensity. She closed her fists in resistance to it.

"Why?” He had begun to pull her clothes away from her body. “Do you want to begin every hour of the night with a new expression of your love? It will be as you wish. I may never join my body with yours as others have, but my...soul...will share ecstasy with yours."

"And the blood?” Olivia asked, keeping the last little distance between them. “There is always blood."

"Yes.” His dark eyes held hers with their intensity. “And there always will be. It is my life. What in you, what part of you is more truly yourself, if not your blood?” He held her closer, lying close above her, the arch of her hip pressing his. “My only gratification comes through your own. My pleasure is entirely drawn from yours. If you take no delight in what we do, then I cannot know any."

Olivia looked up at him, sensing, as she did occasionally, the isolation he had lived with so long, an isolation greater than her own. “Saint-Germain..."

"I'd forgotten many things in my life, Olivia. Or I'd told myself that they were too ephemeral to matter, since I have lived so many years, and the rest of humanity lives so few. But that was foolishness and bitterness. An eternity of loneliness is more wretched than you can know.” His arms tightened abruptly. “Let me love you, Olivia. There is so little else I can do. Let me help you put behind the bestiality of the men your husband has forced upon you, and his cruelty. If you cannot forget them, not even for the moment that we lie together, perhaps you can free yourself from the torment within you. We have been lovers for too long. I can't leave you. I can never leave you."

"What do you mean, Saint-Germain?” she asked, startled out of the weariness that had clouded her mind. She had heard an unfamiliar note in his voice, an implacable promise.

"How many years have we been lovers? Five? And of those years, how often have we lain together in love, you and I? Thirty times? More? It requires six, possibly seven encounters with me and my kind before there is a change in you, a change that cannot be turned aside."

Her eyes had grown wide as he spoke. “What do you mean, a change in me?"

"I mean, Olivia, that when you die, as you surely will one day, you will walk again, as I do, to live as I do, in the taking of blood and the giving of love. I told you this long ago, when we first began—I thought you understood."

Vaguely she did recall some of the things he had told her when they had first become lovers, a warning of some sort that seemed insignificant then. All that had mattered then was his nearness, the release he gave her and the consolation his presence gave her. At the time, she had not cared what he said, or what he had promised, so long as there would be no more abuses by men who ravished and degraded her for her husband's amusement. “I don't think I did understand. Be like you? Entirely like you?” She felt bemused as she looked at him, opening her entire being to him now in a way she never had before.

"Entirely like me?” he repeated. “Very nearly.” With one small hand he swept back her lackluster hair from her brow. His smile was rueful. “Unlike me, you will not lose your capacity to enjoy your flesh as women do."

She made a face. “I don't think I want a man inside me again, ever."

"Perhaps,” he said rather sadly. “But ever is a very long time and you are apt to see quite a lot of it.” He bent his head again, and this time his gentle, probing mouth touched her breast, passing over the nipples with a feather's touch, a light, elusive motion that drew all her desire after it.

"How will I feel when I change? What will I be like?” After the first moment of doubt and revulsion, she found that the prospect of being like her lover had little horror for her. She had known Saint-Germain too long to find his nature disgusting.

"Much the way you are now, Olivia. You will be stronger, for all those of my blood are stronger, and you will sleep less, much less. The night will be another day to you. You will learn certain...precautions, and will never want to be far from your native earth, although you can carry that with you rather than remain atop it,” he said with a wry half-smile.

"Are you really from Dacia, then?” she asked, realizing that it might be a convenient fiction he had invented.

"Oh, yes, that's quite true. I never lie about that. The Daci came after my people by a considerable time, however. The names we give the land change often, but the earth is the same. It was, he realized, almost a thousand years since his people had lived in the part of the world that was now called Dacia. “Occasionally I return there for the pleasure of being on my home ground, but it is much changed since my youth and almost everything is unfamiliar to me but the earth itself.” He looked away from her, saying almost dreamily, “The last time I was in my native mountains, they thought me a foreigner, just as you do. Those of my blood have become not memories, but legends. They've learned about the Greek lamia and confuse us with that.” When his eyes met Olivia's once again, they were sad. “My cherished love, there are almost none of my blood left, and they are scattered over the face of the earth like grains broadcast in a field. We are few and vulnerable, for all our strength."