“If I hadn’t scared you away the night of my birthday, you’d never have run to the Politia. And if you hadn’t worked for the Politia, you never would’ve been at the stone circle on Samhain and you would’ve never been in Romania.” The two places the devil had snatched me.
“Ugh, you are playing the blame game. Andre, the fates have been meddling with my life since I was a baby.” Since before then, if I considered the myths of Hades and Persephone. “Not to mention I’m cursed. It would’ve happened one way or another.”
Andre didn’t respond. Despite my words the man still blamed himself.
“I could simply command you to not feel guilty,” I said.
He rolled his body so that he hovered over me. “If you entertain that thought any longer, I will make sure you can’t talk.”
“I’m pretty sure that bag of yours doesn’t have duct tape in it.”
“I wouldn’t have to gag you to quiet your tongue.” The sexual undercurrents of his words heated my skin.
I cleared my throat. “I won’t glamour you. Pinky promise.”
He raised his brows, the first stirrings of amusement lighting his face. “‘Pinky promise’? Do I even want to know what that means?”
“This is a pinky promise—” I grabbed his hand and hooked my little finger through his. I got the impression that he was holding back a laugh.
I brought my joined hand to my lips and kissed it. “Now it’s your turn.”
“My turn to do what?” The candlelight threw sensual shadows in the hollows beneath Andre’s cheekbones. The darkness seemed to caress the edges of his lips and painted his brows with heavy strokes. He was exquisite to look at.
“Kiss your hand.”
“I am not kissing my hand.” He made it sound like it was beneath him.
“You have to,” I whispered in the dimly lit room. “That’s how it works.”
He snatched his hand back. “I’m king of the vampires. I will not make any of these ‘pinky promises.’ The oaths I make are in blood.”
“Fine. Be a boob.”
“A boob?” He sounded genuinely offended.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
Andre growled low in his throat. Grabbing my hand, he pressed a kiss to my knuckles. “There, satisfied, soulmate?” Beneath the annoyance, I could hear mirth in his voice, and that’s all I really wanted—to make the guilt go away.
Still, Andre sucked at pinky promises.
I pushed him back down to our makeshift bed and lay back against him. “It’ll have to do.”
He huffed at my words, but I knew he was just posturing. His amusement had become obvious. His hand played with my hair while we laid in companionable silence.
Eventually my mind wandered back to the events that unfolded earlier this evening. “What does my blood taste like?” I asked him.
He fingered a lock of my hair, its ends tickling my cheek. “Ambrosia. Home.”
“Oh.” His words sank in, warming me from the inside out. Coming from a man who’d lived seven hundred years, that seemed to be saying a lot.
He turned his face so that his mouth was pressed to my ear. “Don’t tell me that after everything, you’re surprised by this?”
I stared up at the ceiling. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe, you know?” I said. “I’d always been that girl that other girls hated. The one who never knew her biological parents. The one who never had money.
“Then I came to Peel and made friends, learned of my family, discovered an inheritance, found my soulmate.”
I turned to look at him, our noses brushing. It would be so easy to close those last few inches and kiss him. “Even with everything horrible that’s happened to me, sometimes it’s hard to believe all the good that’s come with it.”
He nuzzled my nose. “I understand.”
All my attention honed in on Andre. It was hard not to think of other things … intimate things with him this close.
We stared at each other, and just like last night, the mood shifted. My skin began to lightly glow, and heat spread through my belly.
“What about … ?” My voice trailed off. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
“What about what?” Andre asked, his gaze as intense as ever.
S-E-X. A short, simple word. After last night, it should’ve been easy to discuss. But my mouth refused to form the words, so instead I coughed. “Um, never mind.”
The hand that rested over my waist now tightened. “Ah,” he said, his eyebrows lifting. “What did you want to ask?” There was a note to Andre’s voice that I couldn’t place.
I shook my head.
“Is this about what we did, or what we haven’t done?” he asked, running the fingers of his other hand through my hair.
I averted my eyes from his, instead staring at the cobwebbed ceiling. “Forget I asked.”
“We’re going to have to go over this at some point, soulmate. It might as well be now.”
He wasn’t going to let this go. Best rip it off like a Band-Aid, nice and quick.
My gaze reluctantly returned to his. “Will it feel like your bite—or like last night?” I cringed even as I spoke.
Andre stopped stroking my hair.
Kill me now.
After considering my question, Andre resumed stroking my hair. “No,” he said. “It will feel different. Better.”
At his words, my skin brightened, illuminating all the dark corners of the chamber. My heart sped up until it was throwing itself at my ribcage, trying to break free.
Maybe this crypt had a small casket I could crawl into and die. I couldn’t remember being this flustered in a long time.
Andre’s hand moved up between my breasts and rested over that organ that kept me alive, the one that now belonged to him. “If I had known a little scandalous talk would move this thing into action, I would’ve spoken on this subject much sooner.” What he hadn’t mentioned was that he’d already sent it racing yesterday.
I could see him reveling in the sight of my skin and the solid thump of my heartbeat.
“You are beautiful, soulmate, for all those things that no one ever notices.”
My throat constricted.
Andre brushed a chaste kiss across my cheekbone. Just as he drew away, his body stiffened.