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Lukas came back, stopping directly in front of me. He scratched his chin. “You do realize she had every right to kill you where you stood, don’t you?”

His mouth moved, but the words weren’t registering. The lips that had swept me off my feet formed a sentence. He was probably yelling at me for something, but all I could think about was how they felt against my own. The kiss should have enraged me. He hadn’t asked for permission. Did I want him to?

Then, he called me his wife.

He was serious about all of this. Deadly serious. Theoretically, I’d feel the heat of his mouth against my own many more times.

But he’s a vampire. I am not. I am going to die. If not soon, then later. Long before he ever does—if he even can.

“I need a minute,” I said, finally taking a look around the room. The noise had heightened as people spilled from their chairs, beginning to stroll around the massive hall and mingle with others.

Lukas held out a hand and I clasped it, wincing at the pressure against my sore limb. He pressed his thumb against my palm and a soothing warmth flowed through my skin, as if I’d been injected with some kind of muscle relaxer or pain killer. The pain subsided.

“We’ll sit in an anteroom for a moment, in privacy,” he informed me.

Patiently, he guided me across the floor, ignoring those who tried to stop him. I kept my head down, letting him lead me to refuge.

A door sprung open before us, and we entered a space filled with a couple soft velvet couches and gleaming tables. A side bar was set against one wall of the windowless room. Lukas didn’t release me until I sank into the cushions.

Resting my head in my hands, I let out a deep breath, relaxing whatever fortitude I’d built and letting it flow away in a wash of tears and gasping breath. It could have been minutes, or perhaps hours, before my heart rate calmed, and my tears stemmed. I stared at Lukas’s shiny shoes the entire time while he hovered over me, watching the polished surface bend and twist through the screen of my anguish.

How I was surviving all this, I had no idea. How I would get through it for however many more years my very fragile life allowed was a mystery. I was nothing compared to these people. I was an ant on an anthill, and they held the magnifying glass. At any moment, any one of them could move the lens into direct sunlight and snuff out my existence like I was never here.

I had no magic, no shiny teeth or lava lamp irises. I barely even had muscles, never mind a healing or killing touch. My thoughts couldn’t slay a man where he stood.

“You called me your wife,” I accused the formidable giant standing over me.

From an objective standpoint, I could do a lot worse. He was as beautiful as a god from a storybook and clearly capable of protecting me as best he could. And he could certainly kiss. When the thought of what else he could do with his enviable body popped into my head, I shoved it down. Already, I spent too many a night wondering.

If he could read my thoughts, he’d know about the night I gave into temptation with wandering fingers and a vivid imagination. My cheeks heated and I glanced down at my lap. If he could read minds, I was fucked.

“That’s why I brought you here.”

“I didn’t sign anything and you didn’t ask. Not once have you asked me if I wanted any of this. Why me? Look at you,” I waved vaguely in his direction, “you could have anyone.”

He lowered himself onto the cushions beside me. “You said ‘please.’ In the coffee shop. Everyone else was lost in their own selfish bubble. But not you.”

“My good manners caught your attention? Lots of people have manners, it's not just me.”

He leaned forward, clasping his hands together and resting his elbows on his knees. “Not just that, although that was the first thing. You intrigued me. The way you moved. Your aura. The way you smell. The way you contemplated.”

“You sound insane.” Truth be told, I was flattered. No one had ever said such things about me, or ever really paid that much attention. At least not that they’d told me about.

“I’d rather refer to it as discerning. When you live as long as I, you can separate the wheat from the chaff.”

I took a deep breath and bit my lip. What he was saying made sense. Most of it. “Just how old are you?”

“About two thousand years old. The years blur together a bit, and I slept for a long time.”

A two-thousand-year-old creature, and I’d caught its attention. I couldn’t help it, I laughed. It sounded like a bad joke. “You’re that old and you’re just wanting to get married now?”

The man seemed stumped by my question. “It's more complicated than that. Time loses meaning when you have all of it. I’ve been busy. That’s not to say I haven’t had occasional dalliances. I met a man once, a vampire King named Elijah. He found a human woman and I had to punish him⁠—”

“You punished him?” What a hypocrite.

“Let me finish. Our laws are set for the safety and security of everyone. There is a very good and immovable reason for each one. At least there is when we set them. However, the relationship between him and the woman was very curious and even I couldn’t deny that the fates ruled in the matter. So, yes, I punished him. But not in a way from which they couldn’t recover and thrive. I merely banished the two of them and whoever they could take to another Realm.”

Not in so many words, but he was basically telling me he could and would punish me if I stepped out of line. Maybe not so much telling me, but the ultimate message was clear.