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Pritkin would have normally been my first choice, but he already considered my intelligence to be sadly underutilized. If he saw me like this, I’d never hear the end of it. Not to mention that he’d demand to know where I’d been, and I hadn’t had time to come up with a good lie yet.
“Find Francoise,” I whispered. She was a witch and a good friend. There was an outside chance she wouldn’t laugh at me. “And get my bra off, fast!”
Marco shied back, and for the first time an expression broke through that tough demeanor. It was terror. “You’re cute, but you’re the master’s woman. And ain’t no woman alive worth that kind of—”
“I’m not propositioning you!” I hissed. “I need to be in that tub with my cuffs hidden under the bubbles until you get back, in case Mircea pokes his head around the door. And I can’t wear a bra and pull that off!”
“Then add more bubbles or something, because ain’t no way in hell—”
“Help me out here, Marco. Unless you want him to know you lost track of me for most of the night?” Truth be told, I wasn’t thrilled with that idea myself. Mircea was already of the opinion that I should be hidden away somewhere for my own protection, and I didn’t need anything adding fuel to the fire. The Pythia’s power wasn’t absolute, and he was damn tricky.
“I’m still not ripping your bra off,” Marco said stubbornly.
“I am pleased to hear it,” a voice said from the doorway.
Marco spun in a move too fast to see and went dead white. I looked past him and found myself staring into a familiar face. One with a full-lipped mouth curved enough to be almost feminine that contrasted starkly with strong, masculine features. Mircea.
“It’s not Marco’s fault,” I said quickly, because a vampire who disobeyed his master usually met a very serious fate.
“Not entirely,” Mircea agreed. His voice was calm, but his cheeks were flushed and a pulse throbbed at his temple. He looked to be in the middle of a slow-burning, very tightly controlled freak-out. And that really wasn’t good. Mircea’s iron control was legendary, although a few incidents in the recent past had shaken it somewhat.
Come to think of it, most of them had involved me.
“Out,” Mircea said, and Marco didn’t need to be told twice.
I was on his heels until a heavy hand descended on my shoulder, right over the suspicious stain. I caught sight of myself in the rapidly fogging mirror, and suddenly it was all too much. “I have fish guts in my hair,” I said.
“I can see that.”
“And I think there may be r-rat,” I admitted tearfully.
Mircea studied me for a long moment and then relief softened his grim expression and he let out a sigh. “I am more concerned about the gunpowder,” he said, pulling me in.
“Most of it didn’t blow up,” I told him, trying to pull back so that the God-knew-what clinging to my sweat-streaked upper body didn’t stain his silk shirt or drop onto his Italian loafers.
“Good to know,” he said calmly before drawing me into a fierce embrace. Mircea kissed like he wanted to live in my skin, slow and thorough, with teeth and tongue, like he never ever wanted to stop. Like he was afraid.
He took a second longer than me to open his lids. When he did, I was confronted with eyes that had gone bright amber. They’re usually a rich brown, changing colors only when his power is surging. From a distance, it’s impressive; this close, it was dazzling.
The rest of the package wasn’t too shabby, either. His hair was mahogany and below shoulder length, although it was hard to tell because it was always pulled back into a slim gold clip at his neck. Well, almost always. The few times I’d seen it in disarray flashed across my mind unexpectedly and heated my cheeks.
Despite close contact with me, his clothes wer
e dirt free and as usual were showcasing the sheer expense of restraint. Today’s outfit consisted of a long-sleeved shirt striped in black on black and black slacks. The clothes were so casually elegant that I immediately wanted to pull them out of shape. Of course, the body underneath might have had something to do with that.
Mircea’s fingers unerringly found the gash in the back of my jeans. They slid carefully over the small wound below and his lips tightened, but I didn’t get a demand for information. I hadn’t really expected one; Mircea was subtler than that. “We’ve been searching for you for hours” was his only comment.
“But Marco said he didn’t tell you—”
“An oversight that will never reoccur.”
Uh-oh.
Master vampires protected their families, and in return they received unquestioning obedience. Most of their servants were physically unable to disobey, with the only exceptions being those who reached master status themselves. But even in their case, going against a direct command was extremely difficult, especially when they served one of the few first-level masters in the world. Marco must have been really strong to be able to flout Mircea’s orders.
And now he was in trouble because he’d covered for me.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, worried.
