Blood Secret. Sharon Page

to the young earl to make him talk. And now one of the sisters had come to his house and served herself to him on a silver platter.

      This was perfect.

      He had tried to look into her thoughts, but she was also a preternatural being—an immortal. He could not see inside her mind. To gain information from her, he would have to do it the old-fashioned way. Seduce her, win her trust, make her fall in love with him, then coax her to tell him what her family had done with his nephew.

      Damn them for making a child a pawn in this battle. But what else could be expected of dragons?

      Poor Lady Lucy stood, her mouth slack with appalled shock, as he pulled his shirt over his head. He saw her eyes go wide and her gaze race over every inch of his naked chest. She had pretty eyes—deep, indigo blue, fringed with dark lashes. Her hair was raven black and fell in lovely curls around her face. As much as he hated dragons, it would be no hardship to seduce her.

      “You must reconsider, Your Grace. I will do anything you wish ... but I cannot stay with you.”

      Laughing, he settled into a chair, and with quick tugs, pulled off his boots. “It is not worth thirty thousand pounds to you to invent a fabrication? Lady Lucy, you came here intending to relinquish your innocence. Yet you are unwilling to tell a lie and say you are visiting a friend.”

      She gave him a fierce scowl. Given her beauty, her scrunched-up forehead and screwed-up mouth even looked fetching. Those blue eyes were annoyingly naïve and innocent. She appeared young—perhaps two-and-twenty. The poor thing certainly had a fool for a brother—

      He broke off that train of thought. Lady Lucy Drake was a dragon and he could not let himself feel sympathy for her. Innocent she might be now, but she would ultimately prove to be like every other member of the Drago species: ruthless, destructive, and predatory. Dragons looked on humans as prey. Dragons killed families. And the monsters stole innocent young boys to hold as hostages—as they had done with his nephew. If he felt his resolve softening, if he felt her large blue eyes begin to tug at his empathy, he only had to remember that her family had stolen his young nephew and were keeping the boy as a hostage.

      With his hands on the waistband of his trousers, Sinjin paused. “It is a bargain, Lady Lucy? If you aren’t interested, I may as well preserve my modesty.”

      She sputtered. Her cheeks flushed a vivid red. Hades, this innocent could prove to be explosive in bed. The thought intrigued him. As flinty and cold as his heart was toward dragons, there was no reason he couldn’t indulge in some pleasure before he had to do what duty demanded of him. But he had to be careful—he could not let her discover what he really was.

      A vampire. He was one of the most powerful dragon slayers; he had been given the gift of immortality. It made him indestructible. And to get what he wanted—his nephew—he couldn’t let her find out he killed her kind.

      “Lady Lucy?” he prompted.

      She breathed a heavy sigh. “All right. I will do it.”

      “Good then.” He left his trousers fastened. “I will have a footman show you to the appropriate bedchamber. A maid will help you undress. I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

      It was going to happen.

      Lucy wrapped her arms around her chest and paced along the beautifully woven Turkish carpets strewn on the floor of the bedchamber. An elderly footman had led her to this room. It was a guest bedroom, apparently, not the duke’s room. In the center stood an enormous oval bed, with a canopy that soared to the heavens. A fire blazed, warding off the cold dampness of a March evening. Fog wreathed the house—she could see it from the windows. It blanketed Upper Brook Street, and rolled down Park Lane.

      On the mantel, a clock ticked. She had been here for only five minutes, waiting for the maid, but it felt like one hundred years. She let her gaze go to the licking flames of the fire.

      And her lips twisted in a grimace.

      What would she do if it happened again?

      She had never done more than kiss a man. The first time she had, she’d felt the change sweep over her as she responded to the kiss. She’d gone hot. Her blood had turned to fire. Her body had felt sort of molten, the way it did before she shifted shape. She’d broken free of the kiss, and had astonished the gentleman who was kissing her—a mortal—by running away.

      She couldn’t run away now.

      But if she started to change shape, she would have to. She couldn’t let the Duke of Greystone learn she was unusual, that she was one of the Drago clan, who could transform from a human into a dragon.

      Fear made her shoulders tremble. If a kiss could trigger her shape-shifting ability, what would lovemaking do?

      But this wasn’t lovemaking, was it? She didn’t want to do it. This had nothing to do with love. This was something she had to endure to save her family.

      The kiss had been something she had wanted. She had been in love with the gentleman—the younger son of the Earl of Montley. It had been years and years ago, when she had been just sixteen. Desire, love, emotion—somehow they had scuttled her control, and the experience of losing control over her shape-shifting had taught her she could never marry a mortal.

      She didn’t even like the Duke of Greystone. There would be no risk of feeling heat and excitement with him. So no risk of having her body shift shape involuntarily.

      A knock came at the door, but it opened before she could say a word in answer. Dressed in a simple gray gown, wearing a white mobcap, a young maid came in. A very buxom maid. It shouldn’t surprise her, Lucy thought coolly. No doubt a libertine duke hired his female servants based on their appeal in his bed.

      “C-c-can I help you w—with your dress, m-m-miss?”

      Lucy couldn’t prevent the small jerk of shock as the maid forced her sentence out. The girl stuttered. Was it nerves? “Thank you. I hope I haven’t frightened you.”

      “N-no.” The girl hastened over, and Lucy found herself in capable hands. She was down to her shift in no time at all.

      She could see her reflection in a large cheval mirror. Her blush deepened with every passing moment. The maid worked efficiently, without speaking, but Lucy knew what the girl must think. That she was a lightskirt. A wanton.

      “This is not what it appears—” She stopped. What else could she say it was? She couldn’t say she had to take off her dress because she’d been caught in the rain, for heaven’s sake.

      “It—It’s not m-m-my business, miss.”

      Lucy saw the maid’s face. She wasn’t stuttering with nerves. She had seen the girl’s small frown of frustration as she got stuck on one of the words.

      “Y-you’ll like H-His G-g-grace,” the maid whispered. The girl smiled tentatively.

      “Like him?” She thought him wretched. Then her blush rushed like wildfire, like dragon’s fire, over her face. “Has he ... been intimate with you?” Had the maid meant she would like him ... in bed?

      “N-no, miss. ’E d—don’t allow that. With me s-stutt—” The girl sighed.

      With an ache of sympathy, Lucy supplied, “Your stutter. Yes, I understand.”

      “C-c-couldn’t keep a place. Th-thought me d-d-daft. Not His Grace. Not him!” The girl spoke vehemently at the end, so filled with force, her stutter left her.

      It surprised Lucy. Apparently, the arrogant rogue had done something kind for this young woman.

      “Y-your shift, m-miss.”

      The maid took it by its lace-trimmed hem and slithered it up, over her head. As the muslin flew past her hips, Lucy felt a breeze through her nether curls and between her thighs. As it brushed past her breasts, it made them