A Tale of Two Vampires by Katie MacAlister

him more pleasure than he could humanly conceive had him aware that his breeches were growing tighter by the second.
    His gaze played along the length of her, lingering on the highlights of her attractions—small but perfectly shaped breasts, rounded hips, and supple-looking legs. Just the thought of those legs wrapped around his hips while he buried himself in her left him in a state that might have been best described as “full to bursting.”
    It was not a pleasant experience.
    “Wake up,” he told the woman, tired of her just lying there demanding that he ogle her. He hated being bossed around, and if this woman of ill repute thought she was going to twist him around her long, sensitive fingers—fingers that he suddenly could imagine doing so many things to him—she should start thinking again.
    To his surprise, her eyelashes fluttered a few times, then squeezed tightly shut for the count of three before they parted to reveal eyes the color of the stormy North Sea.
    “Hrn?” she asked, her gaze on him, her expression filled with confusion. “What…uh…who are you?”
    She spoke English with an accent that he couldn’t place for a moment before realizing it was one that he had heard from a colonist. How on earth had a colonial prostitute traveled to Austria? And why would she go to all that trouble? Were there no customers in the colonies with whom she could ply her wares? He allowed his gaze to wander over her again. If he were at all the sort of man who had to resort to a courtesan, she would most definitely fit his needs.
    “Hello? Eyes up here, buster.”
    Nikola straightened up when the woman snapped at him, giving him an annoyed look. No one had ever snapped at him before. He did not care for the experience, and said with frosty dignity, “I beg your pardon?”
    “You were staring at my boobs,” the woman answered, a defiant tilt to her chin that seemed to warm him despite his irritation with all the untoward snapping. “That’s seriously over the line, and even if I didn’t just turn in my boss for sexual harassment, and thus have become very familiar with what does and does not constitute inappropriate ogling, then I still would have an issue with you eyeing me like I’m a slab of meat and you’re a hungry wolf.”
    “Sexual harassment?” Was she mad as well as heedless? “I am not a wolf. I am a Moravian.”
    “What you are is a damned ogler.”
    Imogen and the others in the room gasped in surprise at her use of profanity.
    He flared his nostrils at her in a manner that had, in the past, never failed to intimidate those who had the audacity to irritate him, although now that he thought about it, there weren’t very many people who deliberately attempted to try his temper in the manner of this annoying, delectable woman. “Madame—”
    “Io.”
    He stared at her for a few seconds. “What did you say?”
    “Io. My name is Io.” She pronounced the name “eye-oh,” as if that were perfectly ordinary. Which was ridiculous, because no one he knew bore a name with only vowels. It had to be something indigenous to the colonies. “It’s actually Iolanthe, but no one calls me that but my tax accountant. Who are you?”
    He took a deep breath, determined to take charge of the situation. “My name is Nikola Czerny.”
    “Nicole? I thought that was a girl’s name.”
    Imogen gasped again. Frau Leiven clutched her throat and staggered over to a chair. Robert studied himself in a mirror that hung on a wall, and adjusted his wig to a rakish angle.
    “It’s Nikola, and it is not a female name,” Nikola answered in an even tone, despite the sudden and almost overwhelming urge to throttle the woman. Or kiss her. He wouldn’t mind doing both, to be honest. “It is my name, and I am a man. It is nothing uncommon, not like a name that contains nary a single consonant.”
    “My name has consonants!”
    “I-O,” he said with much portent.
    “Well, that part is just vowels.” She looked