Of course, Dmitri couldn’t disconnect completely from the Tower that had been his responsibility for centuries, nor had she expected it of him. What mattered was that the instant she looked at him in a way that said she needed his attention, the phone went off. There was no doubt in her mind that she was the most important part of her husband’s life . . . important enough that he would give up immortality should she choose a mortal existence. Because that was something else she understood; her Dmitri would not choose to go on after she died. He’d survived once, wouldn’t again.
Striding back to her, he placed his cell phone on the wrought iron table that held a plate filled with slices of fruit she’d cut for them to share. “What are you thinking?” He leaned down, hands on the arms of her chair. “You’re tense.”
And he’d figured that out from meters away, while she’d believed him engrossed in his conversation. “I almost wish,” she said, putting down her juice and tucking her feet up in the chair, “you hadn’t given me time to rethink my choice.”
His head dropped, and it was instinct to stroke her fingers through his hair. “I’m a bastard, Honor.” Fierce voice, his eyes locking with her own. “We both know that.” When she would’ve spoken, he shook his head and continued. “I damn well rigged your original decision—maybe I thought I was giving you a choice, but by asking you when I did, I made sure that choice was the one I wanted.”
Trailing her fingers down his neck and over the faded gray of his T-shirt, she said, “Was that meant to shock me? Hmm?”
His lips, so sexy and tempting, curved. “You realize most people are intimidated by me.”
“Really?” It was a blatant tease. “How strange.”
He laughed, her Dmitri who had never laughed like this when they’d first met, with the light in his eyes. “You are definitely not Ingrede.”
She’d wondered if he truly understood that when they married, understood that while she carried the soul and the memories of the woman he’d danced with on a field of wildflowers, she’d been shaped by the winds of another life. Now she saw the knowledge in his eyes, saw, too, the heart-piercing love he had for the woman she was in this lifetime, a hunter scarred but no longer broken. “Oh?” she said with a smile she could feel in every cell of her body. “I don’t seem to recall your first wife accepting your every word as law.”
“I do believe your memory must be faulty.” Eliminating the inches that separated them, he claimed an unashamedly sexual kiss that melted her bones. When he trailed his lips over her jaw and down to the pulse in her neck, she fisted her hand in his hair.
“Take me.” It was an offer she’d make only Dmitri. “You haven’t fed today.”
But instead of sinking his fangs into her willing flesh, he lifted his head, frowned. “I don’t want to weaken you. I can have some blood packs delivered—”
“No. You feed from me.” He was hers to care for, hers to adore.
“Honor.”
“I’m on a high-calorie, high-iron, high-fluid, high-everything diet for a reason.” She’d had a long conversation with a Guild physician before they left for Italy. The elderly and somewhat cantankerous man was used to dealing with vampiric-human pairings and had given her guidelines to follow if she intended to be one of those “possessive females.” “If you tell me you prefer a bag of old blood to my neck,” she muttered, “I’ll bite you myself.”
He didn’t soften at the joke, continuing to lean dark and dangerous and a bit pissed off above her. “I’ll get the packs delivered.”
“Dmitri—”
“I’ll let you have your way in every other thing you want, but I won’t compromise your health.” His voice was steel. “I’ll allow myself to feed from you once a week.”
Honor narrowed her eyes. “Every second day.”
“This is not a negotiation.”
“Yes, it is. It’s a marriage. So negotiate.”
His arm muscles turned rigid where he held on to the chair. “Twice a week,” he gritted out, “and you’ll take an iron test every five days.”
Tapping her finger on his wrist, she saw the implacable resolve in his expression, knew the negotiation was at an end. It had gone better than she’d hoped—after all, Dmitri was near to a thousand years old and arrogant with it. “Fine,” she said with a pretend scowl, “but if you ever stop giving me the little bites when we make love, I’m filing for divorce.” The erotic blood kisses were all about sex, not feeding.
This time, his smile was of the very bad man she had in her bed three times a day at the very least. “Oh, I’ll never stop doing that. If you ask nicely, I might even bite you on that spot on the inside of your thigh that you like so much.”
Honor shivered. Once, the idea of a bite on her thigh would’ve made her throw up, and even Dmitri could only do it if she was in a certain position, where she could kick him away if need be . . . but when it went right, when the horrible memories of what had been done to her didn’t overwhelm her . . . oh wow. “You are a menace.”
His eyes gleamed. “Let’s go inside so I can corrupt you some more.”
Impossible, but he gets sexier with every passing minute.