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Maybe if you started acting like an adult, they would treat you like one.
That beast inside was starting to annoy him. If only he didn’t make so much sense. “I want to help, Meg. This is my family, too.”
“Well, I thank you for that,” Meg replied. “We need all the friends we can get. I can’t tell you how much it terrifies me. We don’t have an army, Dante.”
Oh, but they would. If rumors were correct, they would have an army of peasants waiting for their return to Tir na nÓg. Peasants could be dangerous. Dante couldn’t help but think of his plane’s own history. “We just need to find Torin’s weaknesses. We need to
get on that plane.”
“He has it guarded,” Meg said with a helpless shake of her head.
“We’ll find a way.” His mind was filled with possibilities.
Meg patted his leg. “I don’t want to think about this now. It’s coming for me soon enough. Tell me about Kaja. You two seem to be getting along.”
“Yes, she’s a lovely girl.” Dante’s chest felt too tight for another reason now. Kaja was different than he’d believed her to be. She was so much deeper, smarter, more complex than he’d thought. He’d thought he could make a deal with her, but he didn’t have anything Kaja wanted. She didn’t even really understand the concept of money. What did he have to offer her except money and an impressive cock?
And yet she wants you. She wants something deep inside you, something money and fame and privilege can’t touch.
“When I make love to Kaja, I can feel her,” Dante said quietly. It wasn’t something he had expected. No one had warned him in sex ed class about some mystical connection that would form when he made love to his consort.
“Well, I would hope so, Dante,” Meg said.
He didn’t want to exchange sarcastic remarks with her. “I mean I can feel her. Sometimes it’s flashes of her history, like a movie in my head, except that I am her and I feel what she felt. I know what it was like to be Kaja, and it sucked before, but she’s still here and still trying. I don’t know if I would still be trying.”
Meg’s face was bunched in concern. “I didn’t think that happened between vampires and consorts. I thought that was something that only happened between bondmates and psychic Fae.”
Bondmates tended to boost the powers of psychic Fae, and in Meg’s case, she actually bridged her husbands’ shared soul so they each had access to the other half. “I don’t know why, I just know it’s happening and it’s gotten harder to shut it down. Every time I feed, it gets harder and harder to put a wall between us.”
Meg studied him for a moment. “Kaja is from a different plane. Maybe her bonding powers are different from others. Maybe that’s why it’s different. Why would you try to shut it down?”
He didn’t even like to admit that to himself. “I didn’t marry Kaja because I wanted to. My father forced me to. I had to get married, or he was going to kick me out of the business.”
“Well, I suppose lots of marriages started off as marriages of convenience. So you explained all this to Kaja?”
Not exactly. “I told her that we would be married for a while and then she could have her freedom back.”
There it was. He could say the words, but there was something inside him that knew he wasn’t going to let her go. He was really only fighting himself now.
Meg pulled her hand back, and he could see her withdraw. “Well, that’s disappointing. I thought there wasn’t a whole lot of divorce outside the Earth plane.”
“I wasn’t planning on divorcing her. I was just planning on going my own way and letting Kaja go hers.”
Meg’s head shook slightly, but Dante could feel her derision. “After you fucked her and fed from her. And does Kaja understand this?”
Dante thought about Kaja’s eyes. When he made love to her they were lit with desire and life. But then he would catch her when she thought no one was looking, and there was resignation there, as though she knew it wouldn’t work out. “Yes, she understands far too well.”
“So, you’re going to use her.”
Yes, that had been the plan. “I don’t know anymore.”
“Really?” Meg looked at him again, her right brow rising in a little question.
“Yeah. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know I feel more for Kaja than I’ve ever felt for anyone in my life. I don’t know if it’s going to last.” He didn’t even know if he wanted it to. Kaja seemed to be all he could think about. She was rapidly becoming an obsession. Even now, he could see her lying in the grass, her pearly skin in sharp contrast to the green around her, the twin holes in her neck on full display. When he got her back to his home, he would have to give her some of his own blood. It would heal the marks, but damn, he liked looking at them. It was barbaric. It was fucking hot.
“Uh, Dante, you having a little trouble there?” Meg asked, her eyes on his mouth.
Fuck. His fangs were out again. This was why he didn’t want it to last. He couldn’t walk around the rest of his life with a hard-on and full fangs—and this weird, soft place in his heart that clenched every time he looked at her or thought about all she’d been through.
