Dracula's Desires Read Online Free PDF Page A

swelling his eye and cheek to grotesque proportions. He waved away the cameras as he mounted the steps to an apartment building in downtown Geneva. “It was nothing. You’d all do the same thing, too. Good day.”
    Mina’s eyes flashed an unholy color.
    â€œHim!” She shoved herself away from the antique table. Her hands gripped the marble edge. As she moved toward the television, Maxwell saw shallow indentations in a perfect rainbow of fingerprints. Not as strong as a vampire, but something else altogether.
    Something guttural and violent roughened her childish voice. “He destroyed my Maker. Bring him to me. Alive.”
    Like an ice cube in boiling water, the brutal passion disappeared back into her body. Her elocution smoothed back to properly educated speech. The raging beast inside of her dissolved into a proper Victorian lady with a weak heart.
    â€œYes, please.” She dabbed at her lips with a monogrammed linen napkin. “I feel faint. I must rest.” Gesturing with a limp hand, Mina ordered the housemaid to follow her mistress upstairs.
    Maxwell leaned away from the table, the food smelling less wonderful. He and his team exchanged nervous glances. Something dreadful boiled beneath Mina’s fragile surface, something that could foul up their plan.
    What had Radu Tepes done to this woman?

C HAPTER 6
    London, 1885
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    â€œ H e’s coarse.” Mina Murray pulled her friend Lucy Westerna away from the bookstore window. Lucy had been exchanging furtive glances with the gentleman outside the shop.
    Mina shuddered. The gentleman was Radu Turciful, the latest darling of London’s gossip.
    â€œHe’s exotic,” Lucy replied, her eyes glinting in curiosity. “You know he spent time in Constantinople?”
    â€œIstanbul,” Mina corrected, her discomfort making her sound stuffy and cold. “Yes, I know. His name means Turkified.”
    â€œHe fascinates me.” Lucy’s gloved hand picked up a book on the curious lands of the people in question. “Mr. Turciful is so learned about the world.”
    â€œHe smells bad,” Mina whispered.
    Lucy gasped in shock at the overly familiar observation. “What is wrong with you, that you have become so inappropriate?”
    Mina swallowed a frown and buried her face in a thick book. Ever since the strange man from the wilds of Eastern Europe arrived in London last month, Mina’s world had been disrupted.
    Her fiancé, Jonathon, who had been handling Mr. Turciful’s affairs, had gone missing. Her parents were enchanted by his stories of the lands of One Thousand and One Nights. Normally respectable, Lucy had taken to staying out all night, sneaking away from her friends in hopes of running into him.
    Worse, no one believed Mina’s stomach churned with revulsion whenever he turned his gaze to her. She sensed something avaricious when he looked at her. Worse, she had been haunted by terrible dreams from the moment he had locked his hazel eyes on her. Dreams of wolves, untamed forests, and two brothers bound with their tangled resentment and love, forever fighting each other.
    Once she had a dream of shocking eroticism, of someone she knew was named Vlad. This dream man resembled Mr. Turciful, but his eyes were shadowed with secrets and unspeakable sad thoughts instead of greed and plots.
    In this dream, she was a bride, Ilona, ready for her wedding night.
    Her husband, Vlad, was a warrior, famed for his ferocity and savagery. Unsure of what would happen, Ilona entered the chamber. Vlad surprised her; his ruthlessness hid a gentle touch and a surprising shyness. Excited by his endless caresses, she begged him to remove his shirt so that she could return the favor.
    The scars on his body spoke of more abuse than even the most punished criminal she had ever seen. Despite the damage, he sported a beautiful torso: flat and hard with surprisingly puffy and sensitive nipples. Ilona