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“Boy, did you marry the wrong woman,” I told him frankly.
“I didn’t.” It was rough. “I love your spirit, your independence—”
“Except right now.”
He paused, but he was fundamentally an honest person and always had been. “Except right now,” he agreed.
He sat down among the profusion of flowers, some of which were clinging to his trousers. I picked off a rose that had gripped him by its thorns so that it wouldn’t stain. It was blood red and velvety soft—the petals, anyway. It reminded me of the ones he’d scattered on our bed on our original honeymoon, which had been in the room I was renting from a friend, because things had been too crazy to allow us to get away right then.
They had stained, too, crushed and ground into the sheets by morning to the point that I’d had to throw that bedding away.
I grinned.
Worth it.
“Why are you smiling?” Louis-Cesare asked, watching me.
I twirled the rose around in my fingers. “I was thinking about Radu,” I lied, because I wasn’t ready to make up yet. “He’d love it here. He’d be in full-on Napoleon-during-his-Egyptian-campaign mode: flowing burnoose, silk cummerbund, turned up shoes—”
Louis-Cesare’s lip twitched.
“—maybe he could even talk some sense into you.”
The smile faded. “I’m not the one who needs to see sense. I want you protected!”
“And I want to find my sister—”
“I will find your sister. I promised—”
“To never treat me like an inferior again.” I looked at him. “Or did that only apply to Dorina?”
I was referring to another, similar incident, when Louis-Cesare had taken it on himself to try to fight one of my battles for me. That had not ended well, with Dorina coming very close to attacking him for the implication that she couldn’t handle herself. That sort of thing was not only incredibly rude in vamp circles, it was dangerous.
In a society where people were constantly jockeying for position, appearing weak was an open invitation.
Louis-Cesare didn’t answer. But, this time, there was a pregnancy in the silence that hadn’t been there before. He was finally listening, and he was thinking. I just wished he’d do it out loud, so I could figure out how his mind worked.
But my hubby was not a talker.
“If we do this,” he finally said. “If we hunt him together . . .”
“Yes?”
“I take him down. When I tell you to back off, you back off, no questions asked. You do not engage him yourself—”
“Is this about his magic? Because I know about magic—”
I suddenly found my wrist grasped in a hold of steel. “This is about you doing as I ask! Promise me!”
There was something in his face that stopped the response that trembled on my lips, something that kept me from pulling back and telling him off. It wasn’t anger, or even the wounded pride of a master not used to being challenged. It was worse.
It was fear.
I searched those blue eyes, but couldn’t tell if it was fear of Jonathan or for me, or a combination of the two. I only knew that this issue frightened my husband when nothing else did, so it frightened me as well. Which only made me more determined that, whatever had put that look in his eyes, he would not face it alone.
“Of course. He’s your kill.”
“I mean it, Dory. I know how you are—tenacious, brave, stubborn. But no arguments. Not on this. When I say you leave, you leave. Immediately.”
