Silken Rapture: Princes of the Underground, Book 2 Read Online Free Page A

was a brilliant gold shot through with millions of minute specks of zipping, flickering white light. He saw it now, from the corner of his vision. It beckoned him, taunted him. Like Morshiel, he was a vitessence-parasite. He sustained his physical body by drinking blood or sex juices—bodily fluids infused with the energy of the spirit. As one of the soulless, Blaise possessed no vitessence, but his craving for it was every bit as powerful as his degenerate clone’s.
    “I don’t have to see her aura to sense she’s special,” Margaret said dismissively. “Is that why you brought her to Sanctuary?”
    “I brought her here because Morshiel wants her. Perhaps you’ve noticed it’s in my nature to deny Morshiel anything he wants.”
    Margaret sniffed. “Aubrey says she’ll come to if we just give it time. For now, it’s best for her to rest. What do you plan to do with her?”
    “ Do with her?” Blaise asked roughly. “I don’t plan to do anything with her.”
    “She’ll be relieved to hear that, I’ll wager,” Margaret said under her breath.
    “One does not do anything to a prisoner, save keep them imprisoned.”
    Margaret glanced around sharply. “ Prisoner ?”
    “I said it, didn’t I?” he barked.
    Margaret looked for a moment as if she might argue. This time, his snarl wasn’t meant for show. Margaret’s response was to frown a threat right back at him.
    “I’ll not keep her behind bars. She’ll have some freedom. I’ll eventually have to take her to Delraven, I suppose,” he growled, referring to his country estate in Scotland. A woman such as she will wreak havoc among the Literati. For now, just see to it that she stays far away from me.”
    “That shouldn’t be too difficult,” Margaret said as she drew the silk sheet over the woman’s body. “No woman in her right mind would seek you out voluntarily with that savage manner of yours…unless she had an invitation to your bed.”
    A smile tickled at his mouth, but he did not succumb to the fancy. “You work at Sanctuary of your own free will and you have never shared my bed. What does that say about you?”
    “Most would say I’m a great fool, but I say I’m the greatest of saints,” Margaret muttered under her breath.
    Her words made him recall that he must contact his brother, Saint Sevliss. He’d video-conferenced with Saint just this morning, and it was because of that communication that Blaise had known something was amiss at the unused British Museum tunnel. How had Saint known about the powerful crystal appearing in London when he resided in Chicago?
    Something wasn’t right, and it wasn’t just him who thought so. The other Sevliss princes shared his confusion and suspicion. Saint had been strange and elusive in his communications for several weeks now—ever since he’d somehow accomplished the impossible and vanquished his clone, Teslar.
    He became distracted from his thoughts by the vision of Margaret standing and briskly tucking the blanket around the slender woman. She made a shooing motion, as if he were an annoying flea instead of a six-foot-five-inch, nearly two-hundred-pound male.
    “You hang about a great deal for someone who says he wants to be left alone. Be gone with you. Let her rest in peace. She’ll have enough to deal with upon awakening.”
     
     
    Isabel shifted her limbs as she arose from her dreams and found herself swimming in silk. Her lips curved in pleasure. As the daughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner, she had only recently tasted luxury. And this was a delicious luxury—something even her newly born fame hadn’t afforded her as of yet. Funny, she recalled seeing her room at the Ritz before she attended the demonstration at King’s College, but she didn’t recall such decadent sheets on the bed.
    Her eyelids popped open.
    For a full ten seconds, she lay there immobile, only her eyes moving around in a wary reconnaissance.
    She was dreaming.
    She was definitely dreaming.
    She lay in the