Ensnared by Innocence: Steamy Regency Shapeshifter Read online

  “Stop!” He strained against the bindings, against her—still attempting to push her away. “Leave me. Go!”

  Every word he uttered shattered another piece of her heart. She fought him, practically sitting on top of him as she battled the locks and rope and his resistance. “Quit working against me!”

  When he refused, kept trying to shove her bodily off him, she hollered, “Lord Blakely.” The strident call at least snapped his head back to her, his eyes open again. “Already, have you rescued me more than once. Let me do this for you.”

  With an anguished howl, he stilled, breathing hard and heavy.

  Despite her frantic efforts, her fingers met unmovable resistance.

  “Where is the key?” She stumbled off the bed and spun toward Nash. “The key!” Her fist bounced off his hard shoulder, and when he didn’t answer but only looked at his brother, she slapped his cheek, bringing his fiery attention right back to her. “He is not in his right mind. I am. The key? Where is it?”

  An odd glint came into his gaze. Mayhap respect? More likely murderous intent, his eyes glowing so, like her beloved’s yet differently too. “No. He told me—”

  “Never mind that, you swine. I do not care to hear what he told you. Where is the blasted key?”

  A hiss came from his throat as he whipped the chain over his head, tripped over to a trunk and rummaged inside. Tense moments later he thunked a large, sturdy key into her waiting palm.

  “Your own brother,” she shrilled, wanting to stab him with the damn key, uncaring if she appeared the deranged one. Instead, she ran to the foot of the bed and stabbed it in the lock around one ankle. “How could you—”

  “Not me,” Nash spat and gestured past her shoulder to the man-beast now staring at them both. Jaw locked as tight as the chains. Eyes as cold as the metal she now lifted from one leg. “Him. Choice. Mattered not that I offered, brought them here.”

  Applying the key to the other leg shackle, she paused. Refused to glance at the lightly furred stranger trembling violently beneath her touch and captured Nash’s gaze. “Brought them. Other women?”

  “Aye, but he refused—”

  Erasmus growled.

  “Brought them here?” she demanded, still staring at Nash, part of her recalling something he’d said downstairs. When she was too distraught to listen. “For sex?”

  The glint in his eyes was answer enough.

  A heave of her right wrist and the second lock clicked open. Too impatient to remove the shackle, she left it open, chain dangling—for him to kick off.

  Nash grunted. “Still, he refused—”

  “Erasmus!” Rounding on her man and the bed, she thumped his naked thigh. “Why did you not call on me?”

  As though ashamed, he squeezed his eyes closed. “Cannot. Not see me thus.”

  “Of all the…” Three steps along the bed and she plied the key in the wrist restraint closest to her. “Asinine…impossible… Argh.” This one proved stubborn. “Chained yourself to the bed?” In that moment, she didn’t know what she hated more—the stubborn lock or the stubborn man it held. “Stupid, deuced… Lock.” Finally, the key turned and she wrestled the manacle off. It clanged to the floor, the chain still secured to the bed frame. A grim reminder that whatever had gone on the past week was far, far beyond anything previously known in her sheltered circle.

  She caressed the reddened flesh of his wrist. He curled his hand into a fist and bent inward, muscles drawn taut, concealing his expression. Hiding from her.

  “Erasmus, what is—”

  “No, Francine. Nay! Moyo wangu,” he murmured, the words agonized but making no sense. “Go. Not want…see me thus…” He refused to look at her, even when she touched his cheek. “Francy… God’s sake, go!”

  “Never,” she swore, climbing back over him to work furiously on the last lock. “Hold still.” Once she did finally free him, would he abandon her all over again? Take off into the night?

  This lock opened faster. But this arm also had the leather straps. While she battled the buckles, her heart raged, beating so fast she felt lightheaded.

  Blazes! His heat rose up through the thin layers of her skirt and shift, met her skin and scorched her. Inside and out.

  “Almost…” Poor, blighted man! What in heaven’s name was he going through? “There!”

  Unleashed, Erasmus lunged upward and his arms encircled her waist and back, crushing her torso against his. He swallowed her in his embrace, something she’d half feared might never occur again when he’d started avoiding her by means of those confounded notes.

  The scents she’d smelled upon entering the room only strengthened within his hold, the singe of burnt candles, the strange odor of animal pelt, but stronger than both, more welcome than either, was the blessed, yearned-for comforting and invigorating spicy musk of her man. Her nails dug into the skin of his back, validating his solid presence. So precious, so real. “Erasmus…”

  He hugged her so hard she thought her lungs would burst, his breath exploding from him in a sound of wounded relief.

  Lips at his ear, she rained kisses over his neck and shoulders, luxuriating in his taste, his presence, so dearly familiar yet overridden with a feral sensuality. “I will not let you go,” she swore. “Never. So stop pushing me away.”

  He grunted, vised his arms and trembled against her. The primal need radiating stronger until it seared her too.

  “What has happened to you?” She leaned back to cup his cheek and run her thumb over the surprisingly soft whiskers. “Your hair…your face… What is it?”

  Even more than his shocking appearance, he exuded a ferocity unlike anything she’d ever encountered. The force of the primitive energy suffused the space around them, painting the air with heady longing.

  The next second, he sent her flying to the other side of the mattress.

  With a roar that shook the rafters, he bounded to all fours, that one chain still dangling from his ankle. She shrieked when he flipped her over, facedown, and came down on top of her. His weight so very welcome.

  “Hapana,” grunted from him. The heft of his body vanished off her and she wanted to cry. Protest.

  But he gave her not the chance.

  His grip at her hips wrenched them upward, brought her to her knees. Head still down, her fingers twisted about the sheet, heart pounding madly.

  He wrestled with her skirts. Cool air assaulted her skin.

  No preliminaries.

  He plowed into her, his shaft finding the path slick and ready.

  Ahhhh…mmmmm. Francine closed her eyes. So very relieved. So thankful.

  He was back. In her. Wanting her. Loving her.

  The thrusting was unlike any other. Fast. Hard. Relentless.

  Over way too quick.

  His rough hands stroked up the side of her back, over the deuced dress she wished anywhere else. Clutched her shoulders—kept her head down. Pinched. Caressed. And when she thought he was nearly finished—

  When his thrusts became ever more harried and forceful, he fell atop her. Plastered his mouth to the curve of one shoulder as he’d done the week prior. And his teeth made impressions. Bit down…just so.

  This time, unlike the others that came before, he did not wrench his body from hers. Didn’t abandon her and leave her slightly bereft at the last second. This time, when his teeth pressed down and his pumping ramped up, the hard hold on her shoulders firming, this time, he ground his shaft in further, released her shoulders to slide his arms around her middle and hug her to him.

  As though he’d never let her go.

  Her heart and hinterlands rejoiced at the truth of it, at the realization. At the reality of his touch: rough, present and returned to her. Even as sweat slicked her face and the sheets… Even as the fast lunges became a series of staccato bursts, nearly cleaving her in two but still, so very welcome…

  Even as he spent his seed inside her, crying, insensibly, “Ningewezaje!” Francine felt at peace for the first time i
n days.

  And still so needy. For him. For her own completion.

  * * *

  Oh God, thank you.

  Erasmus could breathe again.

  Could feel the precious body quivering beneath his.

  Could smell everything about her and actually recognize individual scents now, not just the jumble they’d been since he first gained a whiff of her arrival downstairs.

  Heather.

  Sunshine.

  The lilac soap she used.

  The growing damp from outside, confirming the rain he scented moving in.

  Leather.

  Horse.

  Adam?

  Later. His bamboozled brain could make sense of it all later—or not. For now, every fiber of his body hurt. He felt exposed.

  Raw.

  Unlike anything he’d experienced before.

  She laid him bare, this—

  Nay, not her. What loving her does to you, man. Makes you weak.

  Nay. The opposite!

  Although…right now…as the last few moments came back to him in a rush, the vision of what he’d just done, how he’d just used her…

  As his thoughts returned with a clarity that had been lacking for days, self-loathing came storming in as well.

  You say she makes you strong? You just treated her like a whore. No better than an unrigged drab. Not as the dress-wearing lady she is.

  To the devil with him!

  He finally, finally succeeds in gaining her presence in his home—in his bed, by damn—and he attacks her as a reprobate would a slattern?

  But oh, her glorious arrival!

  Raging at him. At Nash.

  Those cultured, serene tones that had seduced him from the beginning projecting every man’s inner fantasy: Passion. Anger. Impatience.

  The need for her man.

  Him.

  In the seconds after orgasm, all that and more ran through his beleaguered mind…

  So exhausted.

  So thunderingly exhausted.

  Wait.

  Why was she here? How had she come to be—

  Nay. Too tired.

  Time enough to deal with that. Tomorrow. No energy to think now.

  He just needed to lie here, holding her, hugging her. Needed to sleep with her in his arms, next to his heart. Needed—

  Wait.

  The fine hairs covering his entire body prickled. Teeth twinged…started to throb.

  When his body should be returning to some semblance of normalcy, when the beast should be abated, for a few hours at least, if not the following twenty-four, it was hovering? Looming?

  Pressing in again?

  The blame beast was back? So soon?

  How?

  Because he’d denied himself for so long?

  Across the room, he sensed Nash more than heard him. As though in answer.

  Or because they were together? Ever before, during The Change, when they’d fornicated jointly and freely to ease the urge, neither had denied themselves. Neither had struggled against the beast, only indulged it. Frolicked away with willing wenches because neither of them had any reason not to.

  Until this year.

  Had thinking only of himself put them all in danger?

  He’d not realized Nash struggled as well, until he’d appeared, looking no better than Erasmus, even though he’d been indulging. He’d battled his brother as well as himself ever since.

  And now, even as he felt the beast strengthening again, he sensed his brother’s inner monster taking over as well. God help them.

  After slaking his lewd need on the precious one beneath him, he now ached to do it again? Nash needing just as much?

  His arms convulsed around her as he swallowed hard. Not his Francy.

  What have I done? “Ningewezaje!”

  * * *

  With a strangled cry that pierced Francine’s heart, Erasmus leapt off and thrust her away.

  “Stop shutting me out.” Still on edge, in no way lethargic, she rolled up to her knees. Responding to the anguish imprinted upon his savage features, the way he started shaking his head, she lunged forward to hug him again.

  He held her back with one strong hand splayed in the center of her chest, more nonsense coming from his lips.

  She ignored it and slammed her hand against his bare upper arm, digging her fingers in.

  He shuddered beneath her touch. “Damn you! Still need to fuck you so badly,” he said, shocking her with his language. “Cannot control…” Legs crumpled beneath him, head bowed, he pounded the bed with his fist. Behind her, she heard an unfamiliar pfffting sound and turned to look at his brother.

  Who was gone.

  Shimmering… As though his very form was being replaced by a giant feline, one with strangely glittering eyes and a full ruff. A…lion?

  Impossible! She wrenched her head to the side.

  Heard a snarl. A yell.

  Gathered courage and turned back, only to see Nash again. But golden, glowing, unreal… Glittering in the air, the atoms of his body vibrating betwixt that of man—

  And an animal!

  Oh, Nash was still present, the tortured, wild shell of a man, his tattered shirt, torn trousers indecent coverings at best.

  But overlying his human, physical form, was a ghostly, glowing one.

  A giant wild cat… It was a lion!

  One who was stalking toward the bed.

  To her astonishment, the feline howled and convulsed, leaving a human form—Nash?—contorting back into his former shape. That of a man…but not.

  Fear catapulted through her chest and she dove forward, gripping Erasmus around the neck. His shaking had increased. “What is that? What just happened to your brother? I don’t understand! What do you need? Tell me and it is yours.” When he remained agonizingly silent, she shook him and screamed, “Tell me!”

  With brute force, he pried at her arms, attempting to loosen her hold. She clasped her fingers together and secured them behind his neck. “I told you—I’m not leaving without answers.” Or you. “I won’t leave you, Erasmus. No matter what.” The promise shrilled loudly in her ears. She didn’t try to soften it. “Not in a hundred years. A million sunsets!”

  At her vow, his ruthless motions to dislodge her calmed. “Francine…listen.” His words panted from him as though he’d raced across all of London. “We are doomed…coexist as lions. We—”

  “Impossible.”

  But you just saw it.

  Saw Nash turn into—

  “Inawezekana. Our control… ’Tis weakened until the sun…passes out of Leo. Thought I could…”

  He ground his jaws together and closed his eyes. His body convulsed again, the tremors clamoring through him so strong they almost freed her grip.

  She tightened her fingers, resolved. Fantastical secrets or impossible lies, she wasn’t letting go.

  That strange pffftting emerged from his throat too and she saw that two of his teeth had shaped to points and were extending beyond the boundaries of his lips. “Erasmus. Talk to—”

  “Need sex. Need your body…any body would do, but yours is the only one I— God forgive me…couldn’t be with anyone else. Else I’d not be so far gone.”

  In a tender motion defying all that had gone on since she arrived, he ducked his head and nudged the top of it against her chin. The shudder that attacked him running through them both. When he lifted his head to again look at her, his heated gaze glowed as never before. “Need you to…”

  He stopped midsentence and slammed his mouth over hers, plunging his tongue inside. Francine started, not expecting the sudden invasion nor the voracious roughness of his tongue as it licked and caressed the cavern of her mouth. Not expecting the way his teeth would feel nor how he would sense the small cut where she’d bitten herself earlier…sense it and begin sucking the flesh around it, drawing her blood, her very life force, from the tiny crevice and taking it into his mouth…devouring her.

  “Francine,” Erasmus ground out
against her lips, then released her abruptly. “Get th’ hell out of here now, ’fore we both take you like animals. Fighting it but—” A rumbled roar blasted from his mouth and he shook his head, making his tawny hair fly. The ends whipped her face. “Go, damn you!”

  Nash snarled. She jumped. She’d all but forgotten him.

  Startled by the threatening rumble, Francine’s eyes darted toward him. He’d come up to the head of the bed, looking more human again—or at least he did until she saw him placing one clawed hand on the bed.

  His weight caused the mattress to dip as he slowly climbed up next to them. His clothes nothing but shreds now, Nash sniffed the air, a predatory gleam in his eyes.

  “Stay,” Nash pleaded, his earlier anger transformed to pain.

  Twin shudders racked both men.

  She leaned forward and kissed Erasmus’s mouth slowly, feeling the tiny pricks from his teeth when their lips met. “What do you need?” she whispered, thinking she already knew and knowing she’d give him anything, offer him anything, even…

  “You. Forgive me, mpenzi wangu, we both need you.”

  “Take me, then. If it will ease your pain.”

  “Both of us?” Nash asked, leaning over to sniff along her neck.

  Francine shook with reaction and stared into her lover’s eyes. The loneliness was tempered now, eased by a softer, gentler emotion. “Erasmus?”

  He nodded slightly, turning away, closing himself off.

  Nay. She wouldn’t let him hide from this, from them. She coiled her fingers in the long hair streaming past his face, tugging hard until he looked at her. Gazed at her as though he didn’t know whether she was his salvation—or his damnation.

  His hands came up to grip her arms. “Cannot believe the first time…have you…in my bed, ’tis to share you…”

  Desire battled with propriety. Why wasn’t she protesting? Shouting that this wasn’t natural, that it couldn’t be happening? That she didn’t want it.

  Because you do.

  Despite everything, possibly because of it, she trembled with a need so strong she questioned reality. But the sounds of the men’s breathing, of her racing heart resonating in her ears, the echo of the passionate little cries that escaped her parted lips on each exhalation…every vibration thrumming through her convinced her that this was happening. It was real.