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“We knew you were at MAGIC,” he told me a few moments later as I tried to remember how to breathe. “But with the interference from the breach, there was no way to know where you were or if you would get out in time.”
“I wasn’t in there very long,” I said, trying to focus.
“Dulceata, you were in there for two hours.” And for a moment, the mask slipped. For an instant he looked . . . hungry, in some way I couldn’t quite define. Not the predatory desire I’d seen on a few occasions, but more like need. Like some huge, gaping hole had opened up inside him since this morning.
His hair was mussed from having my hands all over it. I reached out and smoothed the worst of the snarls. I wondered if he’d lost friends today, if some of the people who didn’t make it out of MAGIC were family. And then I remembered that Radu had been in trouble. And it had been bad enough to drag Mircea away in the middle of delicate negotiations.
“Mircea . . . is Radu—”
“He is well. He sends his regards.” I felt a wash of relief. “He suffered some damage to the house, but it has given him the excuse to redecorate. I believe the term ‘rococo’ was used.” He glanced at the moose head and his lips quirked. “Of course, he hasn’t seen this place yet.”
“You actually think he’d like it?”
“He has a fine-tuned appreciation for irony and the absurd,” he told me, stripping off his shirt. “He would love it.”
“You should tell Casanova not to bulldoze it, then.”
“I’ll do that,” Mircea murmured. Fine cloth hissed, a zipper jangled and a leg slid between mine in a heady rush of skin on skin. Teeth grazed the soft skin of my neck and a tongue flickered over the vein. “Dulceata, are you familiar with the concept of a quickie?”
I laughed. There were about a hundred reasons why I shouldn’t be here right now, but none of them seemed to matter next to the one overwhelming reason why I should. We were alive, we were both alive, along with the people we loved. It seemed like a miracle.
“Yes, but I didn’t think you were.” Mircea preferred long and slow and sensual, or so I’d assumed based on limited past experience.
“I am familiar with a great many things, as I will be happy to—” He suddenly went still.
His face had the distant look it got when he was communicating with other vampires long-distance. I didn’t particularly understand how they did it; maybe it was merely better hearing, but I didn’t think so. Like I didn’t think I’d imagined his voice in my head in the clinic.
Mircea closed his eyes, his breath coming out in an irritated sigh. “This war is becoming very . . . inconvenient,” he said, and rolled off the bed.
“What is it?”
“I am being summoned,” he told me, shedding his last item of clothing on the way to the bathroom. His voice had been light, but his muscles looked tense as he walked away.
He stepped into the shower but it was glass sided and he didn’t bother to shut the bathroom door. The water turned his hair to black silk and molded it to the shape of his skull. More moisture collected on his high arched brows and dark lashes, before cascading down his cheekbones to wet his lips. Other tiny streams poured over his shoulders and chest in fascinating rivulets, before running down the hard muscles of his stomach and thighs to splash around his feet.
The steam started to obscure the view after a minute, but by then I’d ended up beside the shower door with a sheet wrapped around me. I wiped a hand across the glass so I could see his eyes. “When was the last time you had a day off?”
“Today. I was away from my duties on family business—until the disaster caused me to return early.”
“A day off, Mircea. Not a day doing another kind of work.”
“There are too few senators and too much business for any of us to enjoy much leisure these days, dulceata.”
He stepped out of the direct spray in order to lather up, turning to retrieve a washcloth from a bench in the corner. The motion caused a small cascade down his spine and over the taut muscle further down. My mouth went a little dry.
He paused to grin at me over his shoulder. “Wash my back?” he offered innocently.
I licked my lips and stayed where I was. “Tell the Consul she’ll keep and maybe I will.”
A wet eyebrow quirked. “Would you like me to quote you?”
“Go ahead. She owes me a favor.”
He didn’t immediately respond, just added soap to the cloth and began to run it leisurely over his body. I knew what he was up to, but my eyes simply ignored my brain’s order for them to look elsewhere. Instead, they followed that lucky washcloth as it roamed over the fine chest and arms, moved on to the satiny skin of his inner legs, and glided along the jointure of his hip to areas more interesting still.
I had the door open and a foot across the sill before I even realized it. “I do not believe she views your assistance in quite that way,” he said, a slight smirk tugging at his lips.
I frowned at him and drew my foot back. “That’s the problem. She needs to understand that I’m not her little errand girl.”
