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Much too late.
* * *
Round two was in a new room down the hall, which we’d found open and empty after a foray wrapped in a half-drenched fur. The servants had fled, so we weren’t caught in flagrante delicto with our bear skin, instead of on it. And the bed in our new digs was just as big as the old one and, soon, just as well used.
Louis-Cesare sprawled on his stomach afterwards, boneless and effortlessly graceful. We hadn’t thought to bring a lamp, so he was lit only by moonlight. It was a good look on him.
Silver limned his face, turning it dark blue in the hollows and bleaching the lashes almost white. It did the same with the tiny, soft hairs along his spine, running down to the sweet rise of his buttocks and thighs, before deepened into the nest of curls that showed briefly between his spread legs. I let my eyes wander down the smooth line of muscle running from hip to knee, and then again from knee to long, elegant foot. The bottoms of his feet were as smooth and uncalloused as a newborn’s, thanks to vampire healing abilities.
He cracked an eye, feeling the weight of my gaze. “You wish to go again?”
“Just looking.”
He appeared vaguely relieved. I grinned. So much for vampire stamina.
In reality, I wasn’t perving . . . much. I just couldn’t believe that this was real. Any of it: my marriage, my new status, the fact that I was an honored guest at a vampire court. But especially that I had someone to come home to. Someone to grieve with. Someone . . .
Who gave a damn.
That wasn’t supposed to happen and it kept freaking me out.
A strong, long-fingered hand lay limply on the mattress. I picked it up and a faint roughness met my touch along the pads of the fingers and ball of the hand. It shouldn’t have been there. Fighting with a rapier doesn’t usually leave callouses, and his body should have erased any damage before it could build up anyway.
But it existed, nonetheless.
Relics of early sword practice, I thought, my fingers tracing the lines. I closed my eyes and could almost see him, from all those years ago. An earnest faced little boy, probably still redheaded at that point, holding a wooden practice sword. Running around a courtyard with his fencing masters and studying everything about them, from their stance to their finger positions to the direction their eyes darted before they struck, giving away the direction of their lunge.
I bet he’d been a quick study, that he’d surprised them.
He constantly surprised me.
Like tonight. I’d been furious when I thought he was trying to keep me from pursuing my enemies, from avenging two of the only people who’d ever fought for me. But in fact, he just didn’t want me running off exhausted and vulnerable and alone. He wanted me to understand that this wasn’t my hunt; it was ours. That this wasn’t my family anymore; it was ours.
And that I never had to hunt alone again.
“Something pleases you?” Louis-Cesare asked. I opened my eyes to find that he’d turned on his side, watching me as I explored him.
“You please me,” I said roughly, not knowing how to process this much emotion, all at once.
I smoothed a hand up his arm, wanting to touch, wanting something to ground me. But it was caught before it got very far. Clasped and held and then examined, as I had been doing to him.
I didn’t like that. My nails were short and utilitarian, and my skin bruised from some part of tonight’s adventures. There was nothing to admire there.
But Louis-Cesare didn’t seem to agree.
A kiss to the back of the hand, another to the wrist. Blue eyes looking at me with his lips still pressed against my flesh. “You please me, too.”
My breath started coming a faster in my chest.
I reached out with my other hand, desperate to feel all those little details: the chest, hard and lean and beautifully defined; the Adam’s apple that moved so temptingly under my fingers; the shoulder blades with their dusting of freckles that matched the ones on his back—another relic of a former life. The skin was different there, light golden brown instead of the cream of areas further down, speaking of long days spent shirtless under the French sun.
I wondered if it would have a different texture under my tongue. If I could close my eyes and map his body as easily by taste and touch as by sight. I bet I could—
But he wouldn’t let me.
I’d closed my eyes again in preparation, but a second sense had me opening them again. And discovering that my lover had moved, in that so quiet way that vamps have, to the point that I hadn’t even noticed it. Of course, I’d been distracted, I told myself, staring directly up into blue, blue eyes.
“What?” I asked, a little breathlessly.
