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"You...you got rid of that dress fast," I pointed out between heavy breaths. "I thought you liked it."
"I do like it," he said. His breathing was as heavy as mine. "I love it."
And then he took me to the bed.
TWENTY-ONE
I'D NEVER BEEN COMPLETELY NAKED around a guy before. It scared the hell out of me - even though it excited me, too. Lying on the covers, we clung to each other and kept kissing - and kissing and kissing and kissing. His hands and lips took possession of my body, and every touch was like fire on my skin.
After yearning for him for so long, I could barely believe this was happening. And while the physical stuff felt great, I also just liked being close to him. I liked the way he looked at me, like I was the sexiest, most wonderful thing in the world. I liked the way he would say my name in Russian, murmured like a prayer: Roza, Roza...
And somewhere, somewhere in all of this, was that same urging voice that had driven me up to his room, a voice that didn't sound like my own but that I was powerless to ignore. Stay with him, stay with him. Don't think about anything else except him. Keep touching him. Forget about everything else.
I listened - not that I really needed any extra convincing.
The burning in his eyes told me he wanted to do a lot more than we were, but he took things slow, maybe because he knew I was nervous. His pajama pants stayed on. At one point, I shifted so that I hovered over him, my hair hanging around him. He tilted his head slightly, and I just barely caught sight of the back of his neck. I brushed my fingertips over the six tiny marks tattooed there.
"Did you really kill six Strigoi?" He nodded. "Wow."
He brought my own neck down to his mouth and kissed me. His teeth gently grazed my skin, different from a vampire but every bit as thrilling. "Don't worry. You'll have a lot more than me someday."
"Do you feel guilty about it?"
"Hmm?"
"Killing them. You said in the van that it was the right thing to do, but it still bothers you. It's why you go to church, isn't it? I see you there, but you aren't really into the services."
He smiled, surprised and amused I'd guessed another secret about him. "How do you know these things? I'm not guilty exactly...just sad sometimes. All of them used to be human or dhampir or Moroi. It's a waste, that's all, but as I said before, it's something I have to do. Something we all have to do. Sometimes it bothers me, and the chapel is a good place to think about those kinds of things. Sometimes I find peace there, but not often. I find more peace with you."
He rolled me off of him and moved on top of me again. The kissing picked up once more, harder this time. More urgent. Oh God, I thought. I'm finally going to do it. This is it. I can feel it.
He must have seen the decision in my eyes. Smiling, he slid his hands behind my neck and unfastened Victor's necklace.
He set it on the bedside table. As soon as the chain left his fingers, I felt like I'd been slapped in the face. I blinked in surprise.
Dimitri must have felt the same way. "What happened?" he asked.
"I-I don't know." I felt like I was trying to wake up, like I'd been asleep for two days. I needed to remember something.
Lissa. Something with Lissa.
My head felt funny. Not pain or dizziness, but...the voice, I realized. The voice urging me toward Dimitri was gone. That wasn't to say I didn't want him anymore because hey, seeing him there in those sexy pajama bottoms, with that brown hair spilling over the side of face was pretty fine. But I no longer had that outside influence pushing me to him. Weird.
He frowned, no longer turned on. After several moments of thought, he reached over and picked up the necklace. The instant his fingers touched it, I saw desire sweep over him again. He slid his other hand onto my hip, and suddenly, that burning lust slammed back into me. My stomach went queasy while my skin started to prickle and grow warm again. My breathing became heavy. His lips moved toward mine again.
Some inner part of me fought through.
"Lissa," I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut. "I have to tell you something about Lissa. But I can't...remember...I feel so strange..."
"I know." Still holding onto me, he rested his cheek against my forehead. "There's something...something here..." He pulled his face away, and I opened my eyes. "This necklace. That's the one Prince Victor gave you?"
I nodded and could see the sluggish thought process trying to wake up behind his eyes. Taking a deep breath, he removed his hand from my hip and pushed himself away.
"What are you doing?" I exclaimed. "Come back..."
He looked like he wanted to - very badly - but instead he climbed out of the bed. He and the necklace moved away from me. I felt like he'd ripped part of me away, but at the same time, I had that startling sensation of waking up, like I could think clearly once more without my body making all the decisions.
On the other hand, Dimitri still wore a look of animal passion on him, and it seemed to take a great deal of effort for him to walk across the room. He reached the window and managed to open it one-handed. Cold air blasted in, and I rubbed my hands over my arms for warmth.
"What are you going to - ?" The answer hit me, and I sprang out of bed, just as the necklace flew out the window. "No! Do you know how much that must have - ?"
The necklace disappeared, and I no longer felt like I was waking up. I was awake. Painfully, startlingly so.
I took in my surroundings. Dimitri's room. Me naked. The rumpled bed.
But all that was nothing compared to what hit me next.
"Lissa!" I gasped out. It all came back, the memories and the emotions. And, in fact, her held-back emotions suddenly poured into me - at staggering levels. More terror. Intense terror. Those feelings wanted to suck me back into her body, but I couldn't let them. Not quite yet. I fought against her, needing to stay here. With the words coming out in a rush, I told Dimitri everything that had happened.
He was in motion before I finished, putting on clothes and looking every bit like a badass god. Ordering me to get dressed, he tossed me a sweatshirt with Cyrillic writing on it to wear over the skimpy dress.
I had a hard time following him downstairs; he made no effort to slow for me this time. Calls were made when we got there. Orders shouted. Before long, I ended up in the guardians' main office with him. Kirova and other teachers were there. Most of the campus's guardians. Everyone seemed to speak at once. All the while, I felt Lissa's fear, felt her moving farther and farther away.
I yelled at them to hurry up and do something, but no one except Dimitri would believe my story about her abduction until someone retrieved Christian from the chapel and then verified Lissa really wasn't on campus.
