“I don’t know how to do this,” he told me. “I never had the chance to find out. I spent my youth trying to survive. When I finally managed to work my way into a better situation, a stable one, for the first time . . . Christine.”
Yeah, irony of ironies, the best catch on the planet had ended up tied to a crazy bitch named Christine, who was even a worse romantic prospect than me. But she’d gotten her claws into him deep, not because he loved her, but because he’d hurt her. To be more exact, she’d been injured, he’d tried to change her into a vampire to save her life, and it hadn’t worked. She’d ended up as something called a revenant, a masterless monster that resulted sometimes when a change went wrong, and was supposed to be put down immediately.
But, of course, he hadn’t put her down. Instead, he’d kept her around, like a living penance. And, I strongly suspected, because he’d been abandoned by his own Sire, the vampire father who’d left him just as his human parents had done, and he couldn’t bring himself to do the same to anyone else. But Christine wasn’t a vampire, and she was crazy, and it had all ended about as you’d expect.
“I made many mistakes,” he told me quietly. “For a long time, I thought I would end up paying for them forever. Maybe that is why, lately, everything seems so unreal. She is gone and you are here, and I never thought—” He stopped, and his hands clenched again. “I never thought I would have this, so I am afraid.”
That threw me some more, because it had never occurred to me that Louis-Cesare, of all people, felt anything but confident. He sure as hell never acted anything but confident. Or looked it—
Until now, when there was something in his face I didn’t want to acknowledge, especially not with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head.
“You should be,” I told him harshly. “I could hurt you. She could hurt you. Or worse!”
“And what if she does?”
“What?”
“Or what if I die in the war? Or what if you do? Will being deprived of love for whatever time le bon Dieu gives us help in some way?”
I scowled at him, because he still wasn’t getting this. “If you’re not around Dorina, maybe you won’t die at all!”
“And if I am not with you, I will not live at all, not as I have these past months.”
I stared at him.
“There are a thousand ways to die,” he told me quietly. “There are so few to really live. I would gladly risk the former for the latter, and it is my choice, is it not? To risk whatever I must, my heart, my body, my soul, in order to be with you. Is that not what love is?”
I stared at him some more. And not just because he was doing it again, saying outrageous things that you weren’t even supposed to let yourself think. But because—
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.”
I was never supposed to be asked that question.
Dhampirs were nature’s loners, the perfect killing machines, with no friends, no lovers, and no family. And for a long time, that’s all I’d been. My own father had rarely talked to me, and my mother had died before I was old enough to remember, so what did I know about family?
But I’d wanted one anyway. Desperately, terribly, no matter how many times I told myself that I couldn’t have it. To stop whining and get on with things, and so I had. For a very long time, I had. And just when I got used to that, when I finally started to accept it, when I was actually kind of okay with it—
Fate, or fortune, or the game master up there with the whacked-out sense of humor decided to send me a blue-eyed Disney prince with his heart on his sleeve and words on his lips that I’d never, ever expected to have said to me, and—
And I had no idea what to do with him.
None at all.
“Then let me tell you,” he said, pulling me closer so he could murmur in my ear. “Love is sending someone away, because you would rather hurt than hurt them, Love is fighting beside them, bleeding along with them, and putting their well-being above your own. Love is trembling at their touch so much that you do not notice that they are trembling at yours.”
“I’m not trembling.”
“I am,” he whispered, and kissed me.
I kissed him back, because I didn’t know what else to do. I never had. From the first time I met him, the only way I’d ever found to deal with him was, well, this.
And it worked pretty well, because he immediately deepened the kiss, one hand sliding under my hair, one remaining on my thigh, gliding up and down the silky fabric. Okay, make that really, really well, and God, this wasn’t helping, I thought, biting his lower lip. I was supposed to be pushing him away, not trying to climb down his throat!
Then he groaned and did that thing, that slide-his-hands-down-my-back-to-grip-my-ass thing, and—
What the hell; this fight wasn’t going anywhere anyway.
“I never felt fear like when I saw you fall,” he murmured, when I paused for breath. “And didn’t know if I would be fast enough to reach you—”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does.” He caught my hand, which had gone exploring under that sweater. “I know you don’t want me here tonight—I knew before I came.”
“Okay.” I started working on the jeans, which wasn’t as easy as you’d think left-handed.
“You’ve been independent for so long, it’s all you know. I was like that, too. I understand.”
“Great. Good to know.” The jeans were too tight, especially with him sitting down, and then there was the problem of the damned jumpsuit.
“Can you understand why I couldn’t not come?”
“Can you just shut up and fuck me?” I gritted out, wishing Radu had sent a dress. Some short little thing that would be easier to—
Screw it.
The jumpsuit ended up on the floor, and I ended up back on his lap, and, oh yeah, that was better, that was perfect.
Damn, I loved the theatre!
Hard hands gripped me, moving over me while also trying to get him out of his own clothes. Which wasn’t easy in a chair that wasn’t built for two and also had a squeaky spring somewhere inside that was advertising the preshow, not that anybody could see. We were in the top row of boxes, so pretty high up, and the front of the box was fairly tall, and there were no seats on the left of us, where the curtain remained open. Just the stage where some musicians were warming up, but they were in the pit far below.
Squeak, squeak, squeak. Louis-Cesare growled something profane, I laughed, and he rolled us onto the floor.
And, okay, yeah. Better, especially since I’d ended up on top. There was plenty of room in front of the first row of chairs, the plush carpet looked clean, and the dim light filtering in from the theatre was just enough to see by. Ten/ten, would fuck again, I thought, and pulled his sweater off.
And stopped halfway, because he’d just caught something in his mouth.
In fairness, it had been swinging in his face, so.
Callused hands slid up my back, pulling me down as he started to suck, sending shivers throughout my body. I didn’t have his sweater all the way off. It still trapped his arms, which was nice, which was perfect, I decided.
“You can’t get away now,” I told him.
I don’t recall trying.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Mental communication was new to me, mental laughter even more so. And strangely intimate, because I couldn’t usually do it with anyone but him. And because it was still echoing in my head when he slid into me.
He was hot and hard and long and thick and gah! I came almost instantly, vibrating before he even started thrusting, with little explosions going off behind my eyes. Like my body had been waiting for this forever; like our whole relationship had been foreplay.
Which was how it felt every time, but something about the trapped vamp and the cozy darkness and the need to be silent and the perfect rhythm that we fell into despite the fact that he couldn’t use his hands . . .
Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh God—