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“Damn it,” I muttered.
Mircea grinned at me, unrepentant, and pulled me down beside him. “The mage did not curse me earlier. Did you not wonder why?”
I stared at that beautiful face. It was close enough to kiss, but I didn’t think that was what he had in mind. “He wants to help.”
“Perhaps. But is it not equally possible that he has arranged a trap?”
“He has no reason to—”
“Tensions have been rising between us and the Black Circle for some time. They would love nothing better than to strike a preemptive blow. And what could be better than killing a Senate member and the new Pythia, all at once? He made sure to exit the room—”
“Because you threw him out!”
“—something he c
ould have easily anticipated. Once we are alone, he would expect curiosity to compel us to open the box, and thereby spring the trap on ourselves. And once the general alarm was raised, he could slip away in the confusion.”
And I thought I was paranoid. “That isn’t—” I stopped, because he wasn’t listening to me anymore. He looked up and, for a moment, his gaze was somewhere else.
“The mage is becoming difficult for the guards to handle. I will return shortly.” He rolled off the bed and headed for the door.
“Mircea!”
He looked at me over his shoulder, his face grave. “I will not kill him, Cassie. But I will have the truth of this—of a lot of things. One way or the other.”
I watched him go, wondering how things could possibly have gone so bad so fast. I’d known Mircea distrusted mages—all vamps did—but I’d foolishly assumed that a life-or-death situation would override that. And it probably would have, if he’d believed that was what we were facing. But he’d convinced himself that Pritkin was a dark mage assassin and I was the naive dupe he’d conned into helping him. If I needed his cooperation, I was toast.
For the fail-safe to kick in, I needed only two components: proximity and sex. I was pretty sure I still had the former. Mircea wouldn’t want anyone interfering in family business, so he would almost certainly question Pritkin here, in his suite. From what I’d seen, it was pretty extensive, but not any more so than a large house. Which meant that they were somewhere nearby.
It was the second part of the equation that was problematic. I’d assumed we all three had to be present and actively involved to break the geis, but what if we didn’t? I bit my lip, furiously trying to think of anything anyone had said that might give me a clue one way or the other, but there was nothing. It was a fifty-fifty gamble: proximity to two Mirceas and sex with one of them would either break the geis or it wouldn’t. And if I gambled and lost, I’d end up completing the very bond I’d been trying to avoid.
Billy had advised me once to never gamble unless I could afford to lose. But not gambling now would lose me Mircea. And I didn’t think I could live with that.
I stared at the innocent-looking box on the nightstand and wondered if I was nuts. Marlowe hadn’t been able to handle him; the Consul had been spooked enough to order him locked up; and here I was about to release him. What if he didn’t recognize me? What if I registered as no more than food? I’d seen how fast he could feed; I’d be dead before anyone could stop him.
I can shift out if he’s too much for me, I told myself, hoping it was true. Yeah, and then what? If this didn’t work, I was out of ideas. If this didn’t work—I pushed the thought aside as seriously counterproductive and gingerly picked up the box.
Pritkin had told me something else once, too: the geis responded to the caster’s deepest desires. And right here, right now, there was nothing Mircea and I wanted more than to have it gone for good. I just hoped that was going to be enough. I placed the box in the middle of the bed and took a deep breath.
And then I let him out.
The figure of a man suddenly appeared on the bed beside me. At first, he looked to be asleep, until I looked closer and saw his face, tucked halfway into the pillow and lined with pain. His hand clutched blindly at my shoulder, clenching as tightly as his jaw, for a long minute. And then, slowly, hesitantly, almost as if it had forgotten how, it relaxed.
This man was no threat, I realized, blinking back tears as I watched him. He barely even seemed to know where he was. I tried to comb my fingers through his hair, but they got stuck over and over in all the snarls. “Mircea?” I whispered.
His lashes were clumped together and he didn’t open them at the sound of my voice. He didn’t reply, either, but a tentative hand wandered up to my neck. His fingers slid along the curve of my flesh to rest above the pulse of the jugular, right over the two small scars he had made.
I gazed down at him with wet eyes and a heartbeat so rapid it felt like I was about to faint. Then he blindly grasped for me, making these choked, desperate noises in his throat that I finally realized were words. He was asking me if I was sure.
“I’ve never been surer about anything,” I said fervently, and the decision was suddenly just that easy. I couldn’t let him die. All the logical arguments in the world couldn’t change that one simple fact. This whole time, I’d been battling for his life as much as for mine, and I wasn’t about to lose him now.
It was easy to turn him over with my hand on his chest. It was much less easy to ignore the heat of his skin, the tight nipples riding over lean muscle or the strong thump of his heartbeat. I liked the way his breath caught, the way his stomach hollowed under his rib cage, when my thighs touched his sides.
I wasn’t kidding myself—I knew how any relationship between us was going to go. Sooner or later, Mircea would do something unforgivable, probably at the Consul’s behest. Or I would make a demand and he wouldn’t give in. Even without the Circle’s suspicion hanging over us, there was a clock ticking every second we were together, the distant sound of the oncoming train. I knew, I’d always known, that I couldn’t keep this. But for this one night I could have him. And I wanted it all.
I pressed my palm against him and was rewarded with a hitching, indrawn breath. He was thick and uncut, tender at the tip, irresistible. He was darker here, rose and gold, and it was fascinating the way the flush shifted under the pressure of my slowly moving fingers. I brushed my lips over the side of him, drinking deeply of his familiar scent. It made it easy to accustom myself to the strangeness of what I was doing.
I licked, a long, slow trail from base to head, letting my tongue wander and slide and yes—a gasp spurred me on. I did it again, and felt him shudder above me. I didn’t hesitate after that. I needed this—the thick glide of his flesh past my lips, salty and bitter and sweet on my tongue.
