Blood Secret by Sharon Page Page A

nothing wrong with wanting me. Desiring someone does not make you any less strong.”
    How could he have seen that? “It frightens me, that you seem to know everything I’m thinking.”
    “Apparently, I am beginning to understand you.”
    She pressed right into the seat’s velvet and met his gaze. Surprise lit up his eyes and lifted his brows. He seemed more astounded by his pronouncement than she did.
    The carriage stopped. She heard familiar sounds—the final creaks of the wheels, jingling traces, the shouts of her family’s coachman, the crunch on gravel of her footmen’s feet. Sounds she usually never noticed, but that tonight seemed to echo loudly in her head.
    “What does that mean?” she asked him. “What do you mean?”
    “My dear Lady Lucy, I don’t know.”
    With a soft clunk , the steps from the carriage were lowered. The door was about to open and the duke moved across the carriage with the speed of a bolt of lightning. By the time the footman had turned the handle, Greystone was lounging casually on the other seat.
    She was trembling. She didn’t know why. She did know she didn’t want to stop kissing him. Seeking equilibrium, to stop shaking, to regain control, she said, “I’ll go in alone. I know Creadmore—my family’s butler—would not reveal any secrets in front of a stranger. It is going to be difficult enough to get him to speak to me.”
    He smiled at her from across the carriage—a patient smile. Then he leaned across the carriage and pushed back a lock of her hair. She lifted a hand, asking as she did, “Is my hair a mess now?”
    “A few pins have fallen out, I think.”
    “I’ll say—I’ll say it was while I was searching for Jack. Really, I could hardly be expected to look like the perfect lady while haring all over London in search of my brother.”
    He kissed her once more, this time on the bridge of her nose. “Your brother does not deserve you, my dear.”
    Lucy felt an odd tickle in her throat, and knew, from many tears shed after Father’s death, what it meant. Hastily, she stood. He held her hand to help her, but she said, “I can manage.”
    She opened the door and hurried down the dropped steps by herself. How could kissing do this? She felt as though kissing him had unleashed some kind of magic, magic that let him look into her soul. Then Lucy lifted her hems, and she ran up to the front door of her house.
     
    Sinjin was hungry. Kissing Lady Lucy had helped keep his need for blood at bay. To overwhelm his hunger, he would flood his body with sexual desire. It gave him the strength to control his instinctual yearning to go find some human prey and gorge on a slender, sweet-scented neck, and made it easier to slake his hunger with blood in a tumbler.
    Hell. He did not want to do that. But now he was thinking about blood—the tang of it, the texture, the way it would fill him, satisfy his craving—and he was damned hungry.
    He had been made into a vampire because his clan believed dragon slayers had to be immortal. He’d wanted to be a dragon slayer, but he hadn’t wanted to become a monster who really did prey on innocent maidens and take their blood. He’d had no choice—he had been turned into a vampire. His clan did it secretly. No dragon knew they were actually immortal.
    But he refused to kill any person just so he could be fed.
    To distract himself from hunger, Sinjin leapt down from the carriage. Lucy was the daughter of an earl, so her family home was an elegant house on Mount Street. Many carriages clattered along the road, and lights blazed in all the homes, for it was the start of the Season. Balls, routs, musicals, and other entertainments were held each night.
    He usually received invitations. He ignored them all. There was no point in being both a duke and a dragon slayer if he couldn’t be known as eccentric, he thought ruefully. And if he went, he was not sure he could survive being surrounded by the smell of so much blood. Likely, he would