AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I bit my lip, my own anger having drained away as fast as it had come, which was normal for me. My husband tended to take a little longer. I found myself wanting to go to Louis-Cesare, but not sure that it wouldn’t make things worse.
Dhampirs didn’t do relationships. Dhampirs were lonely by nature. We had to be, as most of us weren’t much saner than the things we hunted. I’d always been more stable than the norm, but grouping with other people had been a rarity and usually short lived. There’d been hunting parties to take down bigger prey, even a few that lasted a week or two. And desperate groping sessions in the dark sometimes, with other hunters as lonely as me.
But nothing like this.
Nothing close to this.
Louis-Cesare was the longest I’d ever been with anyone, and I was pretty sure I was screwing this up. Make that definitely sure. I was also freezing without his warmth, in more than one way.
But Hassani’s people had thought of everything, and along with the luxurious sheets and warm blankets on the bed, there was a barbaric looking fur heavy enough to have been a rug, just in case the little half human got cold.
I sat up and pulled it close about me. And then decided what the hell, and dragged it off the bed to join my lover at the window. It felt barbaric against my naked skin, and looked it, too, with the dark brown color sheened by golden lamplight, the same that played over Louis-Cesare’s body. The wards around this place assured that we weren’t flashing the locals—probably—not that I cared much at the moment.
I didn’t say anything, not sure what would help, and for a long moment, we just stood there. Me wrapped in my fur, him wrapped in lamplight, neither speaking. I wasn’t even sure that he would.
But after a moment, he broke the silence.
“I almost lost you tonight,” Louis-Cesare said roughly. “I know you’re hurting, but did you stop to think how I would have felt if my stupidity had cost . . . even more than it did? You say you’re not important, that you can go running after your revenge and it won’t matter what happens to you. How can you not see—”
He broke off. He was still staring out the window, never having turned around, so his expression was hidden from me. I didn’t need it. There was pain in every line of his body, although not the physical kind. His healing abilities had already erased the signs of battle as if they’d never been. But there were other ways to hurt, and the stiffness of his stance and the almost painful rigidity of his spine spoke of deeper wounds.
The kind that even a vampire couldn’t always heal.
I put a hand on his back, and it felt like velvet stretched over steel. I smoothed it around his side, until I felt the warm, inward dip of his stomach, the ladder of his ribs, and the springy hair and soft indentations around a nipple. There was nothing to say, so I didn’t say it. But my touch seemed to be doing something.
Slowly, I felt a little of that awful tension start to ease.
I lay my cheek against his back and continued to say nothing. I didn’t pretend to understand everything that was going on with him, but I got part of it. I got enough.
Louis-Cesare and I weren’t the greatest with communication, but we were learning. It was like two skittish horses getting to know each other; there had been a lot of rearing and even some biting, but also some snuffling and staring and deliberate prancing, just to see if the other noticed. And, lately, some genuine intimacy, although with serious side eye, both wondering if the other was about to bolt.
But we were talking—about some things. About us. But there was one conversation we continued not to have. One topic that was till off limits.
Jonathan.
Not that I hadn’t tried. But nothing made Louis-Cesare close down faster, or clam up more completely. Maybe because he was the only creature in living memory that had made my husband feel weak. Powerless. Afraid.
A first-level master rarely experienced those emotions. He’d not only left behind human weakness, but had also forgotten what it was like to be a lower-level vampire, ordered about by the god-like beings on top of the heap. And that was truer for Louis-Cesare than for most, as even among first-level vamps, he was unusually strong.
He had been a dueling champion for the European consul, Anthony, for centuries, helping to support that crumbling wreck of a court. Because as lax as Anthony was, he was far better of a ruler than some who might have replaced him. And at the same time that Louis-Cesare was almost singlehandedly propping up a failing consul, he was also keeping another first-level master in thrall.
That was right: Louis-Cesare had kept one of the most powerful vampires on the planet under his control, bending him to his will in order to save the life of a woman he despised. But he had felt responsible for her, and he was honorable to a fault. So, he had expended a huge amount of power to make sure that she was safe.
Yet Jonathan had found a way to bring that same man to his knees, over and over and over again. Draining him of power and thereby of life, and in doing so, forcing Louis-Cesare’s family to have to scramble to find enough energy to support their master, feeding him everything they had through the blood bond to sustain him. Only to have most of it go to his tormentor.
Jonathan hadn’t merely victimized Louis-Cesare; he’d held the whole damned clan for ransom. It was a master vampire’s worst nightmare, that he would not be able to protect his family. So, yes, he did know what I was feeling.
The tension had slowly leaked out of him while we stood there, until he was leaning back against me. I put my arms around him from behind, dragging the fur along with them so that it covered us both. With his regal bearing, long, loose hair and fur draped form, he could have been a king from another time, or a Viking warr
ior lost on a raid and washed up on Egyptian shores.
But I’d seen plenty of beautiful bodies through the years; I’d seen far fewer beautiful souls.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
One of those large, yet elegant hands covered mine. “You mean everything to me,” he said hoarsely. “Everything. Promise me—”
“I promise,” I murmured, my cheek flat against the warmth of his back. “I won’t do anything tonight.”
