Fans of Eloisa James & Julia Quinn discussion
Monday Puzzler
>
01/09/12 Is he or isn't he?
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
Neat, I actually know this one without any hints (although the title of the post is sort of a big clue).
Mod
Mod
Mod
The answer is: After Midnight, by Teresa Medeiros.
Mod
Mod
Mod
Mod
Mod
Mod
From now on, you might want to lock those doors. You can always depend on an element as capricious as the wind to exercise its best judgment.
As __________’s words echoed through her mind, ________ remembered how the unutterably lonely he had looked in that moment with his hands braced on the parapet and his face turned to the night.
She strode over to the doors, determined to heed his warning. But when she reached them, she hesitated, her fingers poised over the bolt.
He was out there.
She knew it with a certainty beyond mere female intuition. She could sense him, feel him, like an inescapable shadow cast over her soul. What if she wasn’t afraid __________ would break down those doors? What if she was afraid she would throw them open herself? Perhaps it wasn’t his will that she feared, but her own. After all, she was the one who’d spent six long, lonely years trapped in a prison of duty and obligation—stifling her needs, her wants, her desires. Growing old before her time and thinking only of what would be best for Portia and Vivienne. Was it any wonder she yearned to cast those doors wide open and invite the night into her waiting arms?
Pressing her brow to the cool glass, she closed her eyes against a helpless wave of yearning. Whether __________ was a vampire or simply a man, she was afraid that if she looked into his eyes at that moment, she would be lost forever.
____________ slowly lifted her head and opened her eyes.
The balcony was empty, adrift in a silver wash of moonlight.
She slammed the bolt home with trembling fingers, then strode to her bedchamber door and made certain it was locked as well. Climbing into the bed, she jerked the bed curtains closed round her, shutting out the night and all of its dark temptations.
__________ slowly backed away into the shadows of the balcony. He no longer craved the light of the moon. He had once trusted her to keep his secrets, but now her unforgiving rays only illuminated the darkness in his soul.
It was the moon that had witnessed him standing there with only a fragile pane of glass separating him from the alabaster arc of ____________’s cheek, the plump swell of her lips, the enticing curve of her long, slender throat. The moon that had seen him lift his fingertips to the glass, stroking the cool pane as he ached to stroke the softness of her skin.
He knew that if she opened her eyes in that moment, the moon would no longer be his only mistress. So he had melted into the shadows and waited for the sound of the bolt being rammed into its moorings.
If she hadn’t heeded his warning and bolted the door, would he have been content to slip onto the room and watch her sleep as he had done the night before? Or would some darker force have driven him to lean over that bed and taste her, to cover her mouth and drink deeply until the burning hunger of his body was sated?
____________ sagged against the wall and closed his eyes, growing dizzy with longing. He knew a taste of her would never satisfy him. It would only make him thirst for more. He had denied himself for too long. If he allowed himself even a single sip of her sweetness, he would never be satisfied, not until his hunger had consumed them both.