Free Mozart’s Blood by Louise Marley Page B

his. She reveled in the kiss, in the movement of his lips against hers, in the thrill that ran from her toes to her throat. She was thoroughly drunk on success and excitement, and she felt at that moment she could have anything she desired.
    Distantly, she suspected that it was the Countess’s hand, not Mozart’s, that crept beneath her skirts, that tore away her smallclothes to find her hot, yearning center. In a remote way, she understood this was a shared moment, that it was not only she, but Countess Milosch, joined with Mozart, possessing him, taking him in this moment of passion.
    She didn’t care. Her body flared, melted against Mozart, against the Countess’s hand. When she cried out, she didn’t know whose laugh it was that throbbed in her ear. She didn’t know whose breath warmed her cheek, whose groan vibrated against her breastbone. But she knew, a moment later, that it was the Countess’s teeth she felt breaking her skin.
    The bite flooded her with feeling, a second orgasm of heat and pain and surrender. She felt faint, and at the same time exquisitely aware of every smallest part of her flesh, lips swollen with lust, eyes blind with it, skin tingling with shock even as her bones ached for more.
    The Countess’s teeth released her, and Teresa fell back against the pile of cushions, spent and shuddering. She turned her head to Mozart. His eyes were closed, his mouth open in a sated smile. His neck was bleeding, but there was so little blood that it hardly seemed significant. Teresa put a shaking hand to her own throat. Her fingers came away smeared with red, but there wasn’t enough even to trickle down into the fall of lace over her low-cut bodice.
    The Countess chuckled. Teresa realized it was her voice she had heard. “Lucky little signorina,” Countess Milosch murmured, her hand caressing Teresa’s hip. Her voice throbbed with spent passion. “Lucky to have shared the tooth with Mozart.”
    Teresa sighed, and her eyes, like Mozart’s, fluttered closed. She fumbled to find his hand, and clutched it. The Countess rose, shook her skirts back into place, and left them. Teresa pillowed her cheek on Mozart’s shoulder.
    It was Constanze’s voice that woke her. Teresa struggled to open her eyes. The lids were gluey and resistant. Pale dawn light through damask curtains striped the rugs and polished floors of the salon. Constanze was shaking Mozart’s shoulder, saying, “Wolfgang! Wake up! You’re due at the theater!”
    Teresa rubbed her eyes with her fingers, and Constanze glared at her, her small face rigid with anger. Teresa shrank back against the pillows.
    â€œHow could you let him fall asleep here?” Constanze demanded. She shook Mozart again. “He’s supposed to conduct a rehearsal! And there’s another commission that came in last night, the moment the opera was over, and he doesn’t even know yet….”
    Mozart stirred at last, groaning, and Constanze tugged at him until he sat up, one leg still propped on a silk cushion, the other stretched out, toes caught beneath the legs of a French love seat. He pried his eyelids open with his fingers, and when he saw his wife, his infectious laugh bubbled out into the quiet salon. “Stanzie!” he cried. “Oh, Stanzie, wasn’t it marvelous? The best yet. I could compose a dozen more Giovannis! ”
    â€œOh, Wolfgang, I could just kill you!” his little wife shrieked.
    Octavia Voss startled awake with the remembered sound of Constanze Mozart’s furious voice in her ears.
    She sat up, confused for an instant. No. She was not in Prague, but in Milan. Milan of the twenty-first century, with the wintry sun spilling through the drapes. Il Principe. Don Giovanni . She was Octavia, not Teresa.
    Ugo!
    She threw back the covers and snatched up the thick robe from the foot of the bed. She hurried out into the suite and across to Ugo’s