“Sure you can. What is it you want, Phoebe?” Marcus was teasing—but only in part. Most of him was deadly serious.
“I need . . . want . . . to . . .” Phoebe’s words drifted into silence, replaced by startlingly clear images of just what she would do to Marcus if he were to walk through the door. One encounter took place in the shower, where Marcus slipped inside her while the water flowed over their bodies. Another involved pinning him to the wall, dropping to her knees, and taking him in her mouth. And then there was the stunning image of Marcus taking her from behind, fully clothed, while she was splayed, facedown, across the end of his dining room table, which had been set for a romantic meal complete with flowers and a Georgian silver candlestick.
“I want you in every way imaginable,” Phoebe whispered, her cheeks red with honesty. There was nothing tender in her first wave of vampire fantasies—just pure, raw hunger.
“And then what?” Marcus’s voice turned to gravel.
“Then I want to make love, slowly, for hours, in a bed with white sheets, and curtains that blow in the breeze from the open windows.” Phoebe’s imagination was now captured by an altogether different image of their coupling, one driven not so much by lust as by longing. “Then I want to swim together, and make love in the ocean. And again, in a garden, under the stars with no moon.”
“Summer or winter?” Marcus asked.
She was pleased by his request for further details. It showed he was paying attention.
“Winter,” Phoebe said promptly. “The snow melting underneath us as we move.”
“I’ve never made love in the snow,” Marcus said, thoughtful.
“Have you made love in the ocean?” Phoebe’s erotic dreams were carried away in an undertow of jealousy.
“Yes. It’s fun. You’ll like it,” Marcus said.
“I hate your previous lovers—all of them. And I hate you,” Phoebe hissed.
“No, you don’t,” Marcus said. “Not really.”
“Tell me their names,” she demanded.
“Why? They’re all dead,” Marcus said.
“Not Veronique!” Phoebe retorted.
“You already know Veronique’s name, and her phone number, and her address,” Marcus said mildly.
“I hate that you’re more experienced than I am,” Phoebe said. “You keep talking about our equality, but in this . . .”
“I sure as hell hope you aren’t intending to level the playing field.” Marcus’s voice held a sharp edge.
Phoebe was slightly mollified. She was not the only one in the relationship who experienced a pang of jealousy when other lovers, real or imagined, came up in conversation.
“I feel like a teenager,” Phoebe confessed.
“I remember that phase well,” Marcus replied. “I was hard for a solid week in November of 1781. And I was on a ship full of men, all of whom were jerking off at night when they thought the rest of us were asleep.”
“It sounds dreadful,” Phoebe said with mock sympathy. “But being with your aunt and Miriam is no picnic, I assure you. Tell me what it will be like when we’re together.”
“I’ve already told you,” Marcus replied with a laugh.
“Tell me again,” Phoebe said.
“It will be like a very long honeymoon,” Marcus said. “Once you’re sure it’s me you want, we’ll be allowed to go off together.”
“Where will we go?” Phoebe asked.
“Wherever you want.” Marcus’s response was swift.
“India. No, an island. Somewhere we won’t be disturbed,” Phoebe said. “Somewhere there are no people to bother us.”
“We could be in downtown Beijing, surrounded by millions, and we wouldn’t care.” Marcus sounded very sure. “It’s one of the reasons Ysabeau wanted us to wait a full ninety days.”
“Because it’s easy for newborns to get lost in their mates.” Phoebe recalled the conversation that had taken place in Ysabeau’s apartments at Sept-Tours, on stiff-backed chairs. Marcus’s grandmother had recounted horrifying tales of young lovers who had starved to death in their houses, so intent on the pleasures of the flesh that they forgot to feed. There were tales of jealous rages, too, in which one mate killed the other over a sidelong look at another creature passing by the window, or the mention of a former lover. In such fraught emotional situations between newly mated vampires, even the simple word “no” could bring about death and destruction.
“So they tell me,” Marcus replied. It was a reminder that he might have been in love before, but that was very different from what would happen between him and Phoebe, once they were together again.
Just like that, her mood shifted.
“I wish it were August,” Phoebe said wistfully, her heart kicking up a notch in excitement.
“It will go by quickly,” Marcus promised, “far more so than your first two weeks. There will be so much to do, you won’t have a chance to think about me.”
“Do?” Phoebe frowned. “Fran?oise says I will have to feed from a human. She hasn’t mentioned anything else.”
“You’re growing up as a vampire,” Marcus said. “You’ll feed from a human, go hunting, meet other members of your new family, choose your names, even spend some time outside of the nest.”
So much time had been spent getting Phoebe ready for the first weeks of her life as a vampire, Miriam and Freyja had never ventured much beyond that point. It was as if—
“Did they expect me to die?” Phoebe had never seriously considered this outcome.
“No. Not really. But vampire children can be unpredictable, and sometimes there are . . . complications.” The slight pause Marcus took before his final words spoke volumes. “Remember how sick Becca was, after she was born and she refused any food other than Diana’s blood.”
Rebecca had been a wan, frustrated creature. While Philip had thrived on breast milk, Diana’s daughter had needed richer food.
“Bloodsickness is rare, but it can be fatal,” Marcus continued. “Most vampires develop a broader palate after a few weeks, but not all.”
“So that’s why they put out so many different kinds of blood.” Phoebe had thought it was just Miriam being her usual, overzealous self, but now her thoroughness took on a new, more nurturing tone.
“We all want this to be as smooth and painless a process as it can be, Phoebe.” Marcus sounded sober. “Not all of us had that kind of upbringing. But for you, I wanted it to be different.”
Phoebe was curious about Marcus’s life as a warmblood in the eighteenth century, and his younger years as a vampire. But she also wanted to see them from a vampire’s perspective, through Marcus’s own memories. So Phoebe kept her lips pressed together, and only when she was sure she had the resolve not to ask any questions, she spoke.
“It’s not long now,” Phoebe said, her tone brisk.
“No. Not long,” Marcus repeated, but he sounded frustrated. “Just long enough to feel like forever.”
They said their good-byes. Before the call ended, Phoebe dared to ask one final question.
“What was your mother’s name, Marcus?”
“My mother?” Marcus sounded surprised. “Catherine.”
“Catherine.” Phoebe liked it. It was timeless, as common today as it had been when it was bestowed on a baby daughter in the first half of the eighteenth century. She repeated it, feeling how it sat on her tongue, imagining responding to it. “Catherine.”
“It’s a Greek name, and it means pure,” Marcus explained.
More importantly, it meant something to Marcus. That was all that mattered to Phoebe.
After they hung up, Phoebe took a sheet of paper from the desk drawer.
Phoebe Alice Catherine Taylor.
She looked at the paper critically. Her mother had chosen Phoebe when she was born. Alice was her paternal grandmother’s name. Catherine belonged to Marcus. And she wanted to retain Taylor, in honor of her father.
Satisfied with her choices, Phoebe returned the paper to the drawer for safekeeping.
Then she returned to bed, to daydream further about her reunion with Marcus.
19
Twenty-One
2 JUNE