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And immediately regretted it.
“That is easily remedied,” he told me, and pulled off his sweater. And damn it, that wasn’t what I’d meant.
But Louis-Cesare wasn’t a guy who understood half measures. He was either all in or all out, and it was kind of obvious which side he’d taken on this particular question. Before I could say anything, he’d slipped off his belt, toed off his shoes and somehow managed to peel himself out of those tight-ass jeans—
And proved that it wasn’t only the jeans that were tight. He bent over to drape his clothes across the tub, making my breath catch. It was a mouthwatering view, and then he turned around and gave me a better one. Completely unself-conscious in the way all vampires are after a few years, because when people can hear your every thought, modesty takes on a whole new meaning.
Not that he needed it.
Rumor had it that his father had actually been the Duke of Buckingham, instead of anybody with “de Bourbon” for a last name. This was the Buckingham who had started out as a plain old mister in James I’s reign and ended up a freaking duke, the most powerful person in the country outside the royal family, mainly because of the way he filled out a pair of hose. He’d been called the best-looking man in England, something I hadn’t heard until I met Louis-Cesare and started looking a few things up. But I had no trouble believing it.
No trouble at all.
Louis-Cesare was smiling, just a brief twist of his lips, but it was enough to set me off. “Are you listening to my thoughts again?” I demanded, because that was one side effect of fey wine—it tapped into my usually dormant mental abilities.
“No.”
“Liar.”
He stretched in a ripple of muscle, and flashed me an honest-to-God grin. “I don’t need to read your mind when it is all over your face.”
And okay, that’s it, I decided, and started for the door, only to have him catch my hand and spin me back against him. “I like when it’s on your face,” he murmured.
“Well, you shouldn’t,” I said harshly, trying to drag the damned robe on.
“And why not?”
“You know why! This is a bad idea.”
“Perhaps I like a challenge.”
“Perhaps you’re a glutton for punishment!”
“Perhaps I am in love.”
I stopped knotting the tie of the robe and looked up. And met clear blue eyes, which were suddenly far more serious than I knew how to handle. “That’s…You…” I stopped and licked my lips. “That’s not how this is supposed to go.”
“How is it supposed to go?” He looked genuinely curious.
“We trade witty banter for another minute and then I storm out.”
“Do you wish to storm out?”
“Yes!” And it wasn’t a lie. In that moment, I really, really wanted to get out of there. I wasn’t in the headspace for this battle right now. I wasn’t stupid; I’d known it was coming. But this wasn’t the time. I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to say yet. And I was tired and hurting and confused, and the arms he wrapped around me felt really good, like the hard chest he pulled me against, human warm under my cheek in defiance of all the legends.
“Then at least allow me to finish healing you.”
I didn’t say yes. But I didn’t say no, either, and when he turned me back toward the mirror, I let him. And when his hands went to the robe, I let him manipulate that, too, unknotting the tie, pulling it out of the loops, parting the soft old velour, but leaving it hanging on my shoulders like a frame for my body.
Somehow that made me look even more nude, and as a barrier, the robe was less than worthless. The velvety folds caught and enhanced the warmth radiating from the body behind me, and the thin material did nothing to camouflage the hard lines of the chest and hips and legs pressed against mine. If anything, it magnified the differences between us, soft and hard, small and big, cold and oh, so warm.
Damn it, I should have grabbed a towel, I thought resentfully as big hands slid around my waist.
The darkest bruises lined my rib cage, like somebody had been stomping on it with a boot. And even with everything, it was still amazing to watch the skin change under his fingers, to see the prints they left behind in pale, perfect flesh when he moved them. Power, so like mine but so different, pushed into me with each touch, waves of it, as though he was massaging it straight into my skin. I could feel it mingling with my own, warm and tingling as it sped up a process that should have taken hours or days into bare moments, until he brushed the bruises away like cobwebs.
It shouldn’t have surprised me. Louis-Cesare and I sprang from the same line—kissing cousins, in vampire terms—with his maker being the brother of my sire. And that line had always been known for its healing gifts. Among others, I thought, as those hands moved up the lattice of my ribs to cradle my breasts, to circle my nipples to aching hardness, to push back down my torso and frame my sex.
And suddenly, this wasn’t feeling so soothing anymore.
