I WOKE UP ALONE IN OUR BED LATER. A SLEEPY glance around showed that Bones wasn’t in the bedroom. Curious, I went downstairs and found him on the couch in our family room.
Bones was staring out the window at the mountain ridge in the distance. Vampires had the ability to sit with utter stillness, as immobile as statues. Certainly, Bones was beautiful enough to be a work of art. Moonlight made his hair look lighter than its deep brown shade. He’d changed it from blond back to its natural color to be less noticeable when we were on jobs. Those faint silvery rays also caressed the dips and hollows of Bones’s crystal skin, highlighting his lean, rippled physique. His darker brows almost matched the color of his eyes when they weren’t lit up by vampire green. Shadows made his high cheekbones look even more perfectly etched when he turned his head and saw me standing there.
“Hey.” I tightened the robe I’d thrown on, feeling his tension in the air. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, luv. I’m just a touch nervous, actually.”
That got my attention. I sat next to him. “You never get nervous.”
Bones smiled. “I have something for you. But I don’t know if you’ll want it.”
“Why wouldn’t I want it?”
Bones slid off the couch to kneel in front of me. I still didn’t get it. Only when I saw the small black velvet box in his other hand did it hit me.
“Catherine.” If I hadn’t already guessed, his one and only use of my real name would have clued me in. “Catherine Kathleen Crawfield, will you marry me?”
It didn’t hit me until right then how much I’d wanted Bones to ask me that. Sure, we were married under vampire law, but having Bones cut his hand, slap it over mine, and declare me to be his wife didn’t feel quite like the white wedding fantasies I’d had as a little girl. Plus, Bones had done it to prevent an all out brawl between his people and his sire Ian’s people over the issue of who had dibs on me.
Looking at Bones now made all my childish imaginings pale into nothingness, however. True, Bones was a former-human-gigolo-turned-vampire-hitman instead of a charming prince, but no fairy tale heroine could have felt the way I did, with the man I was insanely in love with asking me on bended knee to be his wife. My throat closed off with emotion. How had I ever gotten so lucky?
Bones made a noise of amused exasperation. “Of all the times for you to be speechless. If you don’t mind, choose one response or the other. The suspense is torturing me.”
“Yes.”
Tears came to my eyes even as I started to laugh at the sheer joy bubbling up inside me.
Something cool and hard slid on my finger. I could barely see it, since my vision was blurred, but I caught a flash of red.
“I had this cut and fashioned into a ring almost five years ago,” Bones said. “I know you think I was pressured into binding myself with you before, but that’s not true. I’d always intended to marry you, Kitten.”
For about the thousandth time, I regretted leaving Bones the way I had years ago. I thought I’d been protecting him. Turned out I was just hurting both of us needlessly.
“How could you be nervous about asking me to marry you, Bones? I’d die for you. Why wouldn’t I want to live for you as well?”
He gave me a long, deep kiss, whispering onto my lips only when I pulled away out of breathlessness.
“I know it’s what I intend to do.”
Later, I was stretched out in his arms, waiting for dawn, which wasn’t far off.
“Do you want to elope, or do you want to do the whole big wedding thing?” I asked sleepily.
Bones smiled. “You know vampires, pet. Always like a fancy show, we do. Also, I know our vampire binding didn’t feel like a real wedding to you, so I want you to have something that does.”
I gave an amused grunt. “Wow, a big wedding. We’ll have a hell of a time explaining the menu to a potential caterer. Choice of entrée: beef or seafood for the humans, raw meat and body parts for the ghouls…and a keg of hot fresh blood at the bar for the vampires. God, I can just picture my mother’s face.”
Bones’s smile turned devilish and he leapt up. I watched him, curious, as he went to the other side of the room and dialed his cell phone.
“Justina.”
I vaulted after him as soon as I heard my mother’s name. Bones sprinted away from me, fighting back his laughter and continuing to speak.
“Yes, it’s Bones. Now really, that’s such a foul name to call me…um hmm, same to you, I’m sure…”
“Give me that phone,” I demanded.
He ignored me, darting out of my reach. Ever since my father, my mother hated vampires with a pathological passion. She’d even tried to have Bones killed before—twice—which was why he was taking such delight in giving her a little payback now.
“Actually, Justina, I didn’t just ring you to chat about what an undead murderer I was…right, degenerate whore as well. Did I ever tell you my mum was one? No? Oh, blimey, I come from a long line of whores, in fact…”