“So he is here? And so how did you get here? Do stop it and let me try your knots, Sebastian,” she said at last. “You’ve done little but pinch me in the…well, somewhere you shouldn’t be pinching me, and you’re obviously hurt.”
“Ah, the hero fails to save the damsel in distress.” Sebastian sighed dramatically, but his fingers fell away and she thought she sensed an air of relief in his voice.
“Well, it isn’t the first time, and I’m certain it shan’t be the last,” Victoria replied, groping around to try to locate the knots at his wrists. His skin was warm, but sticky, and even with the tips of her fingers she could feel the brush of hair that grew under his cuffs.
“But of course…since you are the Venator,” Sebastian replied in a cool voice. “I am here because my grandfather set me to watch the Door of Alchemy over the last days. Apparently he is certain someone is about to open it—and it appears that Akvan and his fiends are the ones. I saw Pesaro skulking around it earlier this evening, and when I learned that there were several…shall we say, civilians invited within the villa, I thought perhaps I should investigate. I didn’t expect to find you here as well.”
Victoria had found the bulk of rope and begun to try to pry it loose, but the knots were tight and she was in an awkward position. “You decided to investigate, or was your real intent to find some way of bedeviling Max?”
“Why should I bedevil him?” Sebastian asked, his voice properly shocked. “In fact, he owes me his life.”
“Indeed? Somehow I cannot imagine that.” She couldn’t get a good fix on the knots; her fingers were chilled from the dampness, and her wrists sore from bending nearly double and trying to manipulate the rope, which was thick and difficult to grasp.
And then, with a twinge of annoyance with herself for forgetting, she remembered the special corset Miro had made for her, the corset he’d executed at Verbena’s suggestion. Her maid and Oliver had tried to create something similar at first themselves. But without the skills of the weapons master, it had been a disaster. Knives and stakes had protruded from every angle, and when she tried it on a blade had slipped from its place and sliced through the delicate shift to her skin. However, Miro had taken the idea and created the corset, and Victoria was wearing it right now.
But the problem was…she would need help accessing it.
“Max wasn’t terribly pleased,” Sebastian was saying. “In fact, I do believe he offered to damn me for staking the vampire that was about to maul him—it was last autumn, that night the obelisk was destroyed.”
“You?” Victoria couldn’t help a chuckle—it was a nervous one, partly because of what she was going to have to ask him to do. “You don’t stake vampires, Sebastian. Even if you could, you wouldn’t. Now I know you’re lying.” It was true—Sebastian loved his grandfather Beauregard, and as a result of his relationship with him and the knowledge that every single vampire had once been a mortal being, with family and loved ones, Sebastian refused to stake the undead, because of the eternal damnation that awaited them after their demise.
I can’t send someone’s father or sister to Hell for eternity, he’d once told her. I won’t be responsible for that.
“Shall we stop this nonsense?” she said sharply. “I want to get out of these ropes, and I think that might be Max over there on the floor—but he hasn’t moved or made a sound since I woke up. And I’m sure if he were conscious, he would have had some scathing comment for you and your melodramatics by now.”
“Oh, dear. Then my sacrifice last autumn will have been in vain.”
“I have a knife,” she said, ignoring his comment. “You’ll need to help me get to it.”
Sebastian laughed. “I’m sure they’ve taken all of your weapons, Victoria, just as they did mine. I haven’t anything but my boots and clothes.”
“Well, if the pinching of my skin is any indication, I’m still wearing my corset,” she snapped. “And that’s where the knife is.”
She felt him go absolutely still. And then, after a moment of stunned silence, she heard the soft puff of a laugh. “My God, Victoria, I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Are you saying you want me to help you out of your corset? Here and now?”
She couldn’t help her own little smile, there in the dark, at the sound of pure lust mixed with shock in his voice. Even though it was not the time nor the place, the thought—the memory of his hands on her skin and breasts and hips—made that little shiver that had traveled up her arm just a moment ago turn into a longer, deeper one that spiraled down, tangling sharply in her belly. Her mouth dried and she swallowed back the absurdity of thinking of such things when they were in danger.
As was her mother.
The sudden reminder of Lady Melly’s possible fate put sharpness back into Victoria’s voice. “No, not to take it off. Just…one of the front strips of boning, on the…er…the left side has been replaced with a slender stiletto blade. I’ll need you to help me remove it, and then put it to use. Do you think you can handle that?”
“I shall certainly do my best,” he said gallantly. “Er…shall I start from the top…or the bottom?”
There was much too much relish in those words, and Victoria had to resist the urge to snap back at him, especially since the answer was, “From the bottom.” Annoying how dry her mouth had become and how unsteady her voice was.
But Sebastian said nothing, nothing at all, to her surprise. He positioned himself so that he was in front of her, but with his back facing her. Thus, he was brushing up against the side of her left thigh. As he began to move his bound hands clumsily around, trying to find the hem of the skirt to slip between it and the edge of her shift, Victoria said a brief prayer of thanks that it wasn’t Max who’d been required to help her. The idea of his strong, long-fingered hands sliding up under her gown made her stomach flutter unpleasantly.
She turned her thoughts smartly away from that and found herself distracted by the gentle stroking of Sebastian’s fingers as he brushed his knuckles over the top of her stockinged leg, now separated from his touch by only the very thin fabric of her shift. The undergarment was of such fine cotton that it might not have been there at all. Her breathing was becoming a bit rough, and she tried to slow it, to steady and level it. She didn’t want to think about the tingling that erupted between her legs as her sensitive skin was exposed from under the much heavier silk of her gown, and then as it was caressed by his finger.
“I hope that you shall put me out of my misery and tell me that the skinny stick of a woman wasn’t your mother,” Sebastian said, his fingers sliding beyond the crease where her left leg joined her hip.
“Skinny woman? What are you talking about?” Her voice was a bit breathy, but maybe he wouldn’t notice. He certainly seemed to be concentrating on what he was doing, if his own steady breathing was any indication.
“There were three of them together—the dry, brittle one, the loud, large, pillowy one, and the bossy, elegant one. I was rather hoping,” he said, his fingers at last beginning to tug at the bottom edge of her corset, searching by feel for the blade, “that none of them was your mother…but since they were talking about you as if they knew you well, I realized I was bound to be disappointed.”
“You saw them? If you caused them to be captured too, Sebastian, I shall never forgive you!” She focused on irritation rather than on the movements of his fingers as they felt around her stays. “It should be there somewhere. You’ll feel the short handle protruding from the bottom of the corset…just…yes, there! I do wish you would hurry.”
“Oh, faithless woman,” he replied. “It was I, in fact, who saved the dry stick of a woman from being some undead’s evening feed. And it was I who directed the man who was supposed to be protecting them—Zavier, was that his name?—to their location so that he could whisk them to safety.”