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Mircea, I thought blankly, what did you do?
“Dorina!”
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully without thinking about it, and it wasn’t the right answer.
Louis-Cesare began fumbling around in the bedclothes. Hands slid over my body, looking for an injury. I quickly recalled that I wasn’t wearing anything but a pair of panties, having not had anything suitable for nightwear after Stinky ruined my tee. I realized when a drop of water hit my nose that Louis-Cesare wasn’t much better off. His hair was wet and the only article of clothing on that long body was a damp white bath towel draped loosely around his hips. I couldn’t understand why he’d been showering in the middle of the night, until I noticed a sliver of daylight peeking through a gap in the heavy curtains.
It was morning. Morning of the day I was going to get Claire back. I started to get up, only to have Louis-Cesare force me back down. “You will stay here until I have a physician called.”
“I’m okay—”
“Which explains why I have had to hold you down for the last five minutes to keep you from tearing at your own skin!”
“—and doctors can’t do anything more for me than you already did.”
“Dorina! You are ill!”
“Louis-Cesare! I’m a dhampir! I go crazy on a regular basis. Just one of the joys of being me.” I tried to rise again, only to find that I couldn’t. It was no longer sexy, I decided. “Let me the hell up!”
Louis-Cesare was suddenly attacked by a growling Stinky, who wrapped his stick arms and legs around the vamp’s head and held on for dear life, making a horrible screeching sound the whole time. “Don’t hurt him!” I yelled as Louis-Cesare reached for the little guy.
A pair of exasperated blue eyes stared at me out of a mask of matted gray fur. But the hands trying to prize Stinky off gentled. He pried the Duergar away and held him at arm’s length. Stinky gnashed useless fangs at him and spat. “It does have a curious charm,” he murmured.
“Will you please let him go? He thinks you’re trying to hurt me.”
Louis-Cesare’s face lost its amusement. “You do well enough at that yourself,” he said shortly. Stinky was bundled into the bathroom for the second time and Louis-Cesare turned to regard me with crossed arms. I suppose the gesture was an expression of impatience or exasperation, but all my brain could manage to focus on was that towel. It looked to be in immanent peril of falling off entirely, barely clinging to the muscular swell of his hips—smooth-skinned hips glistening with water and flecked with soap suds.
I tried to look away, but the man was perfection, beauty given a face and body. The line of his throat, the sleek muscular sweep of his torso, were pure masculine sensuality. And in the dim light filtering in through the curtains, he almost looked like he’d been oiled. My mouth went dry.
“Dorina!” Louis-Cesare had moved, one of those lightning-fast transitions that vamps use when they can’t be bothered to appear human. He was by the bed staring down at me, and that was definitely exasperation on his face. “Have you heard anything I have said?”
“Not really.”
I suddenly felt the press of the intimate litt
le room, with its lush carpets, gaudy gold-papered walls and rich, dark furniture. A breeze from the open window shifted around my legs, pushing into the sheet covering me. It was a tentative little thing, just a filmy tickle, but I was cold and he stood there still flushed from the heat of his bath. The soap smelled good on him, and the faint musk rising from all that warm skin smelled better. I shivered, hard.
Louis-Cesare’s breathing had roughened as my gaze lingered on his body. “You will not distract me!” His words were a surprise, because that hadn’t even occurred to me. Hadn’t, but should have. The last thing I wanted was to discuss my dreams, especially the last one.
A smile flirted with my lips. I stroked a hand up the interior of one strong thigh, shivering at the whiplash of sensation, the blaze of skin on skin. “You mean like this?”
I found myself on my back, with Louis-Cesare above me, his eyes flashing blue gray lightning. He looked powerful, hard, aroused. Stunning. “I do not believe that this was one of your fits, Dorina. There was no provocation—”
I took advantage of his nearness to run a hand down his chest and along the tight belly, until I hit the terry-cloth barrier just below the curve of his waist. He grabbed my hands before I could tug the towel off, and leaned over me, trapping them on either side of my head. “So what are you planning to do?” I grinned up at him. “Tie me to the bed?” As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Louis-Cesare looked like a man who has finally heard a good idea. “Don’t you dare!”
My arms were pushed over my head. I would have protested, but the action brought that perfect mouth close enough to kiss, so I did. He tasted right the way water tastes right—simple, necessary.
Louis-Cesare leaned into the kiss for a moment; then tore away, his eyes blazing with something wild and seductive. The look alone was enough to send a wash of desire through me. It didn’t help that he was close enough for me to reach out and tangle his hair in my fists and pull him close, close enough to kiss again, close enough to make him moan. Just thinking about it made me ache, a sharp knife of want twisting in my stomach. I curled my hands around slats in the headboard to keep from grabbing him.
“I have found nothing else that succeeds with you!” The voice was deep and rough, with only a faint echo of his usual smooth tones. “I make logical arguments, but you do not hear.”
“Don’t,” I warned him in a strangled voice. “I’ve had a hard month. I ache in more places than I can count. The last thing I need is a lecture.”
He hesitated for a moment; then his palms smoothed back down my arms to cup my face. The usually so-controlled features were strangely tender. Those blue eyes met mine, asking, seeking. “What do you need?”
I should have laughed, should have thrown it back in his face as he did once to me. But my gaze had fixed on his mouth, on those impossibly enticing full lips. “Guess.”
The softness of his mouth was a surprise. I leaned into the insistent sweetness of the kiss, loving the way his lips caressed mine, how he managed to infuse the lightest of touches with a longing that made me weak. I let go of the slats, wanting to touch him, but he curved one of his hands over both of mine, curling them tightly around the headboard. For some reason I didn’t protest, possibly because his other hand had found my hip and slowly moved down until it cupped my backside. His mouth had moved along my jaw to my neck as his hand caressed me, as gently as if I were made of glass.
