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I felt a little more tension melt out of his spine. “I swear to you, if they live, I will find those who hurt you. And wreak a bloody vengeance on our enemies.”
Our enemies, I thought, a little startled. But, from a vampire perspective, they were, weren’t they? Louis-Cesare and I were married, meaning that my rag tag crew also belonged to him now. And anyone who hurt one of his . . .
I smiled against his back. “I know.”
He turned and swept me up in a kiss, so sudden that it took my breath away, although it probably would have done that anyway. Louis-Cesare knew how to kiss, but tonight . . . tonight there was something fierce in the way he gripped me, his fingers digging into the skin of my back and upper thigh. Something possessive in the way he picked me up and carried me back to the bed. Something savage in the way his lips plundered mine, and yet also shook slightly against my skin.
I was part of his family, and he’d almost lost me, I realized. He was trying to comfort me, while feeling the same way that I did. He wanted to go after them, too, the ones who had hurt me, wanted it desperately. But he would put that need on hold to make sure that I was all right.
Tears wet my cheeks, and I couldn’t tell if they were his or mine. If anyone ever asks why I married him, I thought. This, this is what I’ll tell them.
Chapter Five
Dory, Cairo
Louis-Cesare was usually a tender lover, but not tonight. That was all right; I didn’t want tender. It would have ripped me apart, sent me screaming into the void. I wanted a partner who could meet my frustrated fury with his own, and turn the terrible need to hurt into something else, something glorious.
The light from the nearest lamp threw our shadows on the wall and I laughed, because together, we made a monster. A hunched backed, multi-limbed thing that would have sent anybody else scrambling for the hills. That was good; that was perfect. I’d been called a monster all my life, and for once, I was fine with it. Let the fey find out exactly what they had awakened.
Louis-Cesare seemed to understand what I wanted without my having to tell him. Although perhaps my body was already doing that. I scratched my nails down his back, hard enough to leave bleeding lines in their wake, and he healed them before I finished the movement. But his eyes caught fire, turning blood red in the lamplight, and I laughed again, baring my throat.
He already wore my mark, the one I’d given him on the night we chose each other, the one that made him mine. But he’d never reciprocated, I didn’t know why. But this seemed like the perfect time.
“Take it,” I urged. I wanted to feel his fangs in me, wanted the distraction of the pain, but also the sense of belonging that such a bite gives, a closeness beyond anything else I’d ever experienced.
But he shook his head. “No.” It was raw.
“Why not? I’m giving it to you—”
“I don’t want a gift!” The strange eyes blazed. And no, that wasn’t lamplight. “I want to earn it. I want to deserve you—”
“And you think you don’t?”
“After tonight?” It was his turn to laugh, and it was bitter. “No, I think I don’t.”
He tried to get up, but I wrapped my legs around his waist and hung on. I could feel him next to me, hard and thick and long and perfect, but it wasn’t his body I craved. All right, it wasn’t only his body. I wanted to wipe that expression off his face, the one that said that all the titles and money and success in the world didn’t matter. That to him, he was still that little boy inside, the one whose family had abandoned him, had locked him away, had left him to rot.
Louis-Cesare had never felt like he belonged anywhere, deserved anything, although I’d thought that had changed after we found each other. And maybe it had, to a degree. I’d never seen him happier than after I claimed him—me, a lowly dhampir, who had dared to mark that aristocratic neck. Any other vamp would have been outraged, appalled and possibly homicidal.
He had been incandescent.
But he’d never done it back.
I turned his face to me and kissed him, gently, sucking on the full lower lip for a moment before nipping it hard enough to draw blood. I smeared it with another kiss, white hot and burning, and then pulled back to watch his body absorb it. That never got old.
“We’re really screwed up, you know that?” I whispered, and felt rather than heard him laugh.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Some say it’s a danger fetish, having a dhampir girlfriend.”
“A dhampir wife,” he said, and the bite in the tone told me that he’d heard them, too: the nasty little comments, the furtive looks, the smiles quickly hidden by a fan or a hand. ‘She’s pretty enough, but so is a viper. And you wouldn’t see me letting one of those near my—’
Louis-Cesare slid against me, making my breath catch in my throat, as if he could hear my thoughts. But he couldn’t. Not anymore. Dorina had facilitated that on the few occasions when it had happened, or I had by borrowing her gifts. And now she was—
“Don’t,” he said, watching my face.
He kissed me between my breasts, which was nice but not what I’d asked for. He kissed my stomach, my thighs, the knee I’d unconsciously pulled up beside his ear, opening myself, offering. He kissed me there, too, longer, slower, sweeter, but it still wasn’t enough, wasn’t what I—
