“You need not tell anyone anything. Stay here with me.”
“I can’t abandon my duty.” He rose to face her. “I have responsibilities.”
She tilted her head teasingly. “Such as?”
“I’m to lead an expedition against the French in a month. The Spencer is to be the flagship.” He cut his gaze to the rocks barely visible in the evening light. “Or was to be.”
Cassandra stepped toward him, her bare feet soundless on the sandy beach. “The Spencer is no more, and they wouldn’t have you lead a prayer now. Why would you go back to a place where people will revile your name? They will blame you for the loss of your men, just as you blame yourself.”
Her hand felt soothing and kind on his arm, and she slid it down to his hand. He closed his fingers around hers.
“Stay with me, Benjamin. I’ll make you happy again.”
They had never spoken specifics, but he knew that staying with her meant giving up hope of ever returning to the world. She wasn’t mortal. He knew that. Exactly what she was he didn’t know.
“Come,” she said, her voice now low and seductive. “Give yourself to me, and I will make you a gift of eternal life.”
“How can life be eternal?” He followed her up the slope and into the woods where she led him effortlessly through the shadows.
“It is eternal through death,” she said.
A shiver ran through him. “You wish to kill me, then?”
“Am I dead?”
He shook his head and then realized she couldn’t see him in the darkness. “No.”
“You’ll be like me. You are nearly that now.”
“What do you mean?”
She opened the cabin door. “How is it you healed so quickly?”
In less than a week, she’d nursed him from the brink of death. He’d wondered about the thick, cold broth she forced him to drink, but it had performed miracles on his tattered body. He believed it to contain animal blood. She wouldn’t tell him what kind.
“By your hand,” he answered.
She led the way into the cabin where she drew a spill from the hearth and held it to a candle.
Even dim light always seemed to leave her radiant like a lone cloud above the setting sun. Her eyes were an impossible metallic color, shiny and silver. At times, they appeared almost gold, usually when she tended to him and touched him in intimate ways.
She moved to stand before the fireplace and held out her hand to him. “Will you stay?”
She was right. The whole town would hate him for losing the Spencer with all souls but his own. He’d never be allowed to lead the forces to Acadia now. In fact, he’d surely be unable to raise another crew, if he even had hope of a ship. No one back in Boston would care that he and his men had caught the pirate ship and recovered the gold, now that both lay somewhere at the bottom of the sea.
His life was over.
Resigned to his fate, he stepped forward and took her hand. Raising it to his lips, he pressed a kiss into her cool skin.
Cassandra smiled as she drew him to her. When they stood together, the top of her head barely touched his chin.
Glancing up at him demurely, she untied his kerchief and drew it slowly from around his neck. Her fingers grazed his chest as she worked, and he felt the magic of her womanly charms. In their short time together, he’d found himself dreaming of holding her nearly every time he closed his eyes. At the moment, he wanted much more.
She unbuttoned his coat, pushed it over his shoulders and tossed it to the closest chair without care. Cold air chilled his exposed neck and seeped across his chest and back, but he didn’t mind. He’d strip bare to touch her, to kiss her tempting lips.
Holding his gaze, she raised her head to look at him openly, and the gold tint returned to her eyes. Her hands gripped his shoulders with a strength he hadn’t guessed she had.
No longer caring how improper his desires were, he touched her waist and found firm flesh under flimsy cloth. Vaguely, he wondered how she handled the cold, but the question floated away as she closed the small distance between them.
She drew his face down to hers and offered her mouth, which he gladly took. Her lips parted under his willingly and without hesitation, and she drew his tongue into her mouth.
Until that moment, he had not realized just how much he needed her.
He’d found pleasure between the thighs of more women than was likely his share, but he’d never felt the burn of desire sizzle through his loins as it did now. And she did nothing but fan the flame.
Her arm slid around his neck as he embraced her, pulling her up against him, suddenly desperate. His cock swelled between them.
Gripping a handful of his hair, she pulled his mouth away from hers and stared at him with blood-red eyes glittering gold.
“Tell me you want me, Benjamin.” When she spoke he saw fangs where her teeth should be, and knew he should fear her, but he couldn’t.
“I want you,” he croaked, his voice barely rising through his choking need.
His senses began to scramble, and he wasn’t sure of his sight or hearing. She seemed to growl low and deep, and she slowly drew his head back, baring his throat to her. Was he a sheep walking willingly to the slaughter?
He didn’t care. All he cared about was holding her, taking her, giving himself to her. He tried to whisper her name, but nothing came out.
“You will be mine,” she said in a voice altered to something unmistakably evil. “Forever.”
He closed his eyes, surrendering.
The pain ripped through him as she sank her fangs into his neck. Having forsaken self-preservation, he held her tighter instead of pushing her away.
She fed off him, sucking the blood from his body. Pain transformed into something else—pleasure, laced with desire.
He fell to his knees.
The pleasure chilled as his strength began to fade. Still, he could do nothing but accept her actions. Whatever she demanded, he would give.
Anything.
Everything.
His vision crackled with strange lights and then lightened until he seemed to be caught in a midday snowstorm. Disoriented, he felt damp ground beneath his hands, and then his face. And then the ground disappeared.
Lost in a blizzard of loneliness, he saw and felt nothing, but he heard her voice. “Drink.”
When he did as commanded, the snowstorm exploded, sending him hurtling through the heavens and falling to earth at terrifying speeds. He would shatter like a glass bowl when he hit the ground.
If he hit the ground.
And then he slowed and began to float, and he felt her hands stroking the side of his face and his neck.
When he opened his eyes, he looked up into Cassandra’s face, as perfect as porcelain. He saw her differently than he ever had before. He saw every smooth line, every eyelash clearly. Her eyes had lightened to silver with flecks of gold and blue, glistening fangs dented her bottom lip, and a smear of blood marred her chin.
Every thought focused on wanting her, but not in the way he had before. He craved her—ached for her.
“Welcome back to the world,” she said. She ran her fingers across his forehead and he saw a gash in her wrist.
When he inhaled, the scent of blood in the air did strange