She raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be sure to get right on that.”
“Actually,” he confided with an intimate smile, “I was more afraid you would melt when you hit the water.”
She pointed at him. “I got that one. You think I don’t know people have nicknamed me the Wicked Witch of the West?”
He grinned and kissed the tip of her finger. “And a very accomplished lady she was too, if a bit combative.”
“You’re ridiculous.” Somehow her hand slipped, and she stroked his face. She felt like she could spend forever like this, resting against his long sprawling body, talking and laughing in the lazy, late afternoon. She might not be able to feel the warmth of the sun directly on her skin, but she could feel how it warmed Rune’s, and the heat from his body sank into hers.
The laughter in Rune’s face died away, and was replaced with an expression that was edged and raw. His gaze darkened and fell below hers, his mouth level and unsmiling. Realization pulsed. He was watching her with such hunger it was a palpable force. She licked her lips and saw in the flicker deep in his eyes that he tracked the movement.
He was going to kiss her, and she wanted it. Gods, she wanted it, full-bodied and openmouthed, both of them tearing into each other like there was no tomorrow, because there really might not be a tomorrow, and all they had was here and now.
This was such a fleeting treasure, this sense of ephemeral beauty, this gorgeous, impossible ache that came when the passions of the spirit turned flesh. This was what it meant to be alive and to be human, to cup the abundant, champagne light of a goddess’s pendant in one’s hands but never be allowed to grasp hold of it.
She took a breath and trembled.
He turned his head and looked away, and the light flowed out of her empty hands. The muscles in his lean jaw flexed. He said, “Are you ready to get serious again?”
She let her hand fall from his lean cheek. Disappointment tasted like ashes. She had done that to him. First she had struck him so hard and cruelly, she had drawn blood. Then she had knocked him away with such violence, she sent him sprawling to the ground. She had spelled and threatened him too, whereas he had shown her nothing but generosity and kindness.
An accomplished lady, she was, if a bit combative.
Really, it was for the best. She had no time for inconvenient attraction, or the luxury to explore strange new feelings or indulge in lazy sun-filled afternoons. If something didn’t happen to change the normal course of events, soon she would have no time at all.
“Of course,” she said, her voice toneless. She pushed off of his lap. She told herself she was not further disappointed when he let her go.
He stood and held a hand out to her. She took it, and he lifted her to her feet. The wind and their struggle had tangled her waist-length hair. She gathered it up impatiently, wound it into a messy knot and tucked the end into the knot itself to anchor it away from her face. Rune watched her, his hands resting on lean hips, his expression inscrutable.
“Do you remember the conversation we had just as you were fading?” Rune asked.
The question knocked her out of her preoccupation. She focused, thinking back. Oh yes. Sometimes I think I hate you, she’d said. She’d forgotten to add that to her list of things she’d done to him. She had to hand it to herself. She had quite a bag of tricks, and none of them were charms. She rubbed her forehead. “Look, I’m sorry about what I—”
He interrupted, his tone impatient. “Do you remember what I said? Because I don’t think you do. I think you were already gone.”
She shook her head, her mind a blank.
He watched her expression closely. “I told you I figured out what was bothering me. I said, what if Vampyrism is not a disease? What if it’s something else?”
“Something else?” Her eyes widened.
“Your research chronicles the history beautifully,” Rune said. “Reading through it, I got to watch it all happen in fast-forward. But you were immersed in it. You lived it all at a much slower pace. You were part of the scientific discussion in the nineteenth century with brilliant scientists who were engaged in cutting-edge medicine. It all made so much sense at the time that now virtually everybody accepts the premise to be true. Vampyrism has so many characteristics of a blood-borne pathogen, but Carling, to me you seem perfectly healthy.”