Vincent smiled sadly and closed the door behind him. “I know exactly what you mean,” he responded. “Five days as a wandering soul, unable to touch you and thinking it was permanent . . . I feel like never letting you out of my sight again.” He threw himself down on the bed and patted the spot next to him. “You can stay here tonight.”
“No, I mean I don’t want to be apart from you. I want to be with you. Really with you.” I had to force myself to say the words. My voice shook because I was afraid he was going to say no. That this wasn’t the time. That we should wait until things had calmed down.
But I had made up my mind. We were going back to Paris the next day, and Vincent and his kind would be facing a danger that could possibly destroy him. Again.
He propped himself up on his elbows and sat there for the longest time, watching me with an expression that I couldn’t read. “If you’re still too weak, we can be careful,” I offered, wondering if that’s why he was hesitating.
Grinning, he shook his head, and pushing himself up from the bed, he walked to me. With only inches separating us, he looked into my eyes. It felt like he was reaching deep inside my mind, furthering the connection between us. Heart. Mind. And then body. It was the next step and it was now.
Vincent’s lips curved up slightly. He leaned down just as I reached up, and we met in between, our lips touching first and then the rest of us, pressing deliciously against each other, pulling the other as close as possible, needing, giving, weaving a tapestry of our bodies. Of our selves.
THIRTY-THREE
I AWOKE TO THE SENSATION OF VINCENT’S LIPS on my forehead, and opened my eyes to see his face above mine. “Bonjour, ma belle,” he said in his low sexy voice.
I squinted around, not knowing where I was for a moment, and then the hotel room came into focus around me. Oh my God. I was in Vincent’s bed. And it was morning. I had spent the night in Vincent’s bed. And last night we had . . .
My skin lit with a fiery flush, and an unstoppable smile possessed my face. I leaned forward and, letting the covers drop, threw my arms around Vincent’s neck and squeezed him against me.
He laughed and pulled back so he could look me in the eyes. “Was that hug for last night?”
“I love you,” I answered.
He pulled me back to him and whispered, “And I adore you, Kate Beaumont Mercier. With a love I never thought I could feel. With all my soul and every inch of my body. Which, by the way, is now marked by you forever.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. He turned to show me a bluish tattoolike mark on his shoulder. “What is that?” I touched it, mesmerized.
“Isn’t this where you pressed the lock of my hair into my clay doppelg?nger?” he asked.
I looked more closely. The mark had a circular pattern to it and was the size of . . . “It’s my thumbprint!” I exclaimed, holding my thumb next to the mark.
Vincent grinned. “That’s what I thought. Very cheeky of you; you not only brought me to life, but you marked me permanently as yours.”
I grabbed him and pulled him down to the mattress. Perching above me, he leaned forward to place an extra soft kiss on my neck just beneath my ear. I shivered and said, “You are mine.”
“I’ve got no argument with that,” he conceded, smoothing my hair back from my face with his thumb. “But I do have the very unfortunate news that in exactly twenty minutes we are meeting your grandfather in the lobby.”
“Hmm, grandfather,” I said. My brain suddenly left the deliciousness of being in bed with Vincent and was gripped by more unpleasant things. Like how I was going to pack and dress in under a half hour.
With lots of running and leaping about, I somehow made it, and in twenty minutes we were climbing into the back of Theodore’s limo. Bran did a repeat performance of the gaping-out-the-window routine that he did on the way in. Papy busied himself with transferring all of the photos he had taken of Theodore’s collection the previous day from his camera to his laptop. I laid my head on Vincent’s shoulder and dozed off, waking as we pulled up to the airport’s private plane terminal.
As we assembled on the sidewalk, I saw Jules step out of the passenger side of a car parked in the drop-off lane in front of us. He headed straight for Vincent with an expression like his best friend was the last person in the world he wanted to see. “Vince, man. We have to talk,” he said, and the two of them walked a short distance away.
Papy and Bran made their way into the terminal with the luggage, but I didn’t follow them. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched Jules explain something and Vincent stumble back a step, as if Jules had just stabbed him in the gut. Jules kept talking, folding his arms tightly across his chest, as if he too were in pain.
I looked over at the car that had brought Jules. The bardia driver was just sitting there with the engine idling: What was he waiting for?