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I nodded, biting back the flare of anger that rose at the mention of my sire’s name. “He raped me. He tortured me, scarring me al over my body before he kil ed and turned me. The scars remained.”
“Your lover, she has no qualms, does she?” He reached out a lazy finger and traced circles on the denim of my jeans, over my knee.
With a shake of the head, I smiled. “No. She taught me to love myself, despite the scars. But they can be disconcerting, and I don’t want you freaking out when I show you my body.”
“Battle scars, my dear.” Roman tipped my chin up with one finger. “Be fiercely proud of them—
reclaim them and change them from what they were first intended to do. Take them for your own.
They make you the vampire you are. And vampires—we are predators, we are top of the food chain. We walk among the Immortals.”
His eyes, so gray and ful of mist, frosted over as he straightened his shoulders. “Your scars no more diminish your beauty than the red of your hair, or the curve of your lips. Your passion, your beauty, reside in your soul, and that you possess intact and for yourself only, no matter what your looks. But trust me, you are a beauty in form as wel as spirit.”
I let his words settle, then raised my arms. He eased my turtleneck over my head, gently tossing it to the side, baring my breasts. Slowly, Roman leaned forward, his eyes flickering up at me, and took one nipple in his mouth.
A fire sparked somewhere low, rumbling in my bel y, and I let out a little moan. He wrapped his arms around me and laid me back, stretching out beside me, his mouth stil working my breast. I gasped as the sensations began to spread through my body, setting off explosions down my spine, toward my thighs.
With one hand, Roman unbuckled my belt and I reached up to help him, but he pushed my hands away and then unzipped me. I lifted my ass and slid the jeans down and somewhere between his lips on my nipple and his lips on my neck, my jeans were off and I was exposed in the dim light that filtered down from the chandeliers on the ceiling.
Roman rose up, kneeling beside me as he slid off his jacket, baring a muscled chest. A thatch of chest hair matched the rich brown of his ponytail, thinning as it trailed in a V toward his abs. His arms were strong, wel muscled, and scars laced his wrists and chest—not deliberate, like the scars tattooing my body, but marks left by a whip or a crop. I reached forward and traced one that ran the length of his chest. It had to be thousands of years old, preserved in the flesh, a living fossil of a torture long gone.
“I fought many battles before I was turned,” he whispered. “My mother was a queen even then.
We ruled a smal country of nomadic warriors. I waged war by her side, with my brothers and sisters, as we conquered neighboring vil ages and eventual y smal territories. I nearly died five times.”
“Show me.” My gaze lingered on the scars, taking in the scope of what he was tel ing me. He might even have existed before the Great Divide, when the worlds were ripped apart.
Roman stood and slid out of his trousers, careful y draping them over a nearby chair. He turned to me, strong, hard, ready. But rather than jump me, he motioned toward a long scar that graced his thigh.
“A wooden spear almost kil ed me. I recovered, though. I was strong and healthy and the magic of our shamans was strong.” He pointed toward another scar that marred his left side. “Obsidian arrow. Came close to my heart but missed by just enough to spare me.”
He turned and lifted his ponytail. His back was laced with scars from a whip. “When I was caught by an enemy. He tried to whip me to death. Instead, he vanished into the grave and I walked away, bleeding and in pain but triumphant.”
Roman drew his shoulders back, standing so regal y that I almost forgot he was naked. The power, the elegance rol ed off him in a wave and swept me forward. I rose to my knees and leaned forward, pressing my lips to the scar on his thigh. Fol owing it across his stomach to the scar on his side, I left a trail of soft kisses, nibbling, barely nipping him as he shuddered and his erection hardened.
“Oh my beautiful girl, you are such a wild spirit,” he murmured, his hand gently holding the back of my head as I slid around and began kissing my way up the lacerations that crisscrossed his flesh. He was cold—unlike my Nerissa—but the chil was familiar, matching my own body temperature, and as I pressed my naked length along his back, a hunger began to build.
Hunger for blood, hunger for sex.
I slid my arms around his waist. “I’ve never been with a vampire before, except when . . .”
“Sshh . . . don’t sul y this moment with his name. Not here. Not now.” Roman turned around and gathered me in his arms, crushing his lips against mine. He let out a low hiss. “There are so many things we can do,” he murmured. “I long to taste you, to feed on you. Wil you exchange blood with me?”
I found myself nodding, eager to taste him, eager to feel the rush of cool blood in my mouth. The blood that remained in our bodies was nowhere near normal temperature, but it stil flowed, stil circulated at an almost unbearably slow rhythm, giving no pulse, no fire to the body.
He lowered his lips to my neck. “Let me drink from you, then drink from me, my beauty, and taste my power.” As his fangs touched my flesh, neatly puncturing my neck, a wave of euphoria slid over me and I closed my eyes, spiraling into a river of passion. It flowed, pul ing me deep, sucking me under like the fingers of a riptide.>“Your sire is Blood Wyne?” I stared at Roman. No wonder he was so powerful and ancient. He was old past counting. And living in Seattle. In a palatial estate. There was only so much my mind could take in during one conversation, and I had the feeling I’d almost reached my limit.
“Yes—and more. My mother is Blood Wyne. She only became my sire when she was turned.
And she then turned al of her children. There are eight of us scattered throughout the world. I am the eldest.” He rubbed the arm of the chair he was sitting in. “The Vampyr are truly the sons and daughters of Blood Wyne, in al imaginable ways.”
I slowly inched back into my chair. She’d turned her own children? A sick feeling hit the pit of my stomach. “Were you in danger? Or did she just decide to turn al of you into vampires with her?”
Roman picked up his cigaril o, considered it for a moment, then pinched it out. “Blood Wyne was . . . a possessive mother. After her transformation, she waited very little time before attacking us. Al eight of us—she ordered the guards to hold us down and then fed on us until we were near death. Of course, at that point she forced us to drink from her veins. I’m lucky. I was the oldest. But my sister and brother, twins . . . they were only twelve years old.”
He sounded almost sad, and a mist covered his eyes. “They live forever locked in prepuberty.
They turned on her, ran away together. I last heard of them five hundred years ago, when they terrorized and destroyed a vil age in France.”
