AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“What about your servant? Did he see anything?”
It took me a second to realize that he meant Billy Joe. Pritkin had this weird idea that Billy was for me what an enslaved demon was for a mage—a capable, obedient servant who stayed unruffled in the face of adversity. When the truth was pretty much exactly the opposite. As soon as the crisis was over, Billy had fled into his necklace and I hadn’t seen him since.
I gave him a little poke, just for the hell of it, and got back the metaphysical version of the finger. “Billy doesn’t know anything,” I translated.
“Are you certain?”
Tell him to suck my balls!
“Pretty certain.”
Pritkin ran a hand through his hair. It was sweaty, and although he’d put on a pair of old jeans, they didn’t cover the marks from being hurled through a wall. He looked about as beat up as I felt.
A particularly livid bruise trailed up his rib cage and wrapped around his back—where he’d hit the wall, I assumed. He was standing close enough that I could reach out and touch it, so I did. It was hot under my fingertips—Pritkin was always a little warmer than human standard—for the instant before he moved away.
I let my hand drop. “You should get that seen to. You might have broken a rib.”
“It’s fine,” he said curtly, as another vamp came in carrying a phone.
“For you,” the man told me, his eyes already sliding south.
“Is there anyone in this apartment who hasn’t seen me naked?” I demanded, grabbing the sheet and the phone.
“I genuinely hope so, Cassandra.”
I sighed and let my head thunk down against the padded surface of the table. I could always tell how Mircea was feeling based on what version of my name he chose to use. When he was in a good mood, it was dulceat?a?, the Romanian endearment that colloquially translated as “sweetheart” or “dear one.” When he was less happy, it was plain old Cassie. And when he was royally pissed but not showing it because he was Prince Mircea Basarab, member of the powerful North American Vampire Senate and allaround cool guy, it was Cassandra.
“Cassandra” was never good.
But this time, it wasn’t my fault.
“This time, it isn’t my fault,” I told him, wincing as Marco found another heretofore untortured cut.
“I am not calling to assign blame.”
“Then why the ‘Cassandra’?”
“You frightened me. For a few moments, I could not feel you.”
I frowned at the phone. “You’re in New York. How are you supposed to feel me?”
“Through the bond.”
“We have a bond?”
A sigh. “Of course we have a bond, dulceat?a?. You are my wife.”
By vampire standards, I didn’t say, because that always got a Cassandra. The ceremony, if you could call it that, had been over before I fully knew what was happening. But that didn’t matter, because little things like the bride’s consent aren’t required in vampire marriages.
Except, that is, by me.
That was why Mircea and I were dating—or, at least, that’s why I was doing it, to figure out whether this whole relationship thing was something I could handle. He was doing it to humor me, when he remembered, although he clearly thought the whole thing was ridiculous. Mircea had been born in an era when men took what they wanted and kept it, as long as they were strong enough. And strength had never been one of his problems.
Listening, on the other hand . . .
“I listen,” a velvet voice murmured in my ear.
I bent my head and let my hair fall over the phone. It wasn’t much as privacy went, but around here, it was as good as it got. “Uh-huh.”
