They breathed together, gasping for air between kisses that moved from mouth to mouth, and then along jaws and cheeks and with teeth and delving tongues…and then he moved his hand, and they were both fumbling at the fastening of his breeches, the string of his drawers. She rolled to the side as he shrugged out of them, his legs solid and muscular, just as tanned as the rest of his skin.
“Shall we?” he murmured, standing over her, for the first time completely undressed, looking lean and toned and all shades of gold and bronze. Her legs hung off the edge of the bed, and with a half smile he lifted her skirts again, parted her thighs, and, his hands on her shoulders, fitted himself into her in one smooth slide.
Victoria caught her breath, sighed, and closed her eyes as the sweetness blazed through her. She met his rhythm, rose and fell, greedy and demanding—if she were going to take pleasure, she would take it all—until the wave finally rolled over, undulating through her core to her belly and out to every limb.
Sebastian arched into her with one last stroke, his hands leaving her shoulders to curl into the blanket, tangling painfully into her hair as he matched her.
And then there was nothing but their bodies collapsed together, breathing heavily, hot and damp and sated.
After a while Sebastian moved, lifting his face to look at her and using one finger to trace along her jaw. “Feel better?” he asked, his voice low and full of amusement.
Victoria shifted, and he let his weight slide onto the bed next to her. She smiled over at him and saw the way his eyes darkened from gold to brown when she did. “What is it?”
“Your smile is quite entrancing—all those tiny dimples—yet you don’t show it often enough.”
She sat up, working her chemise and corset up to cover her br**sts again, and shrugged. “Perhaps I find little to smile about as of late.”
“At least you’re smiling about this. I thought perhaps you might hold my little secret against me, and deny both of us this pleasure.”
She looked at his vis bulla, the only cold, silvery relief on his bronze and gold figure, and some of her pleasure slid away. “You deny your fate and your duty. I can’t understand that any more than I can understand your leaving your grandfather—and other undead—to exist. You have a responsibility to take them out of this world.”
“And send them to Hell? For eternity? No, Victoria, I told you…I won’t have that on me. They were once mortals, fathers, sisters, lovers. I can’t damn them for something they cannot control.”
“But you have…you’ve done it, Sebastian, or you wouldn’t have this.” She brushed her fingers over the warm silver cross. “You had to have killed at least one vampire to get this.”
“Two. I’d killed two before…before last autumn, when the obelisk was destroyed. Exactly two vampires. And then…I killed another the night your aunt died. I told you, but you didn’t believe me.” He reached for his breeches, no longer looking at her, but at them.
It took her a moment to realize what he was talking about. “You said you saved Max’s life. That night? You killed a vampire to save him?” She paused in the action of reaching around to button her dress. Impossible to do alone. “Why? You and Max…”
“Despise each other? Hmmm…that word might be a bit strong…. No, no, it isn’t. Yes, there is quite a history between us. I didn’t do it to save him, Victoria.”
“Then why? Why shatter your own moral code, nonsensical as it might be, for a man you dislike?”
He pulled the trousers up over his hips, busied himself tying them. She waited until he looked up. And then she saw the answer in his eyes.
“For me?”
He reached over to pull on his boots.
“Sebastian.”
“He can be what I cannot. You need him.”
She stared at him, felt her face warming and stupefaction letting her jaw drop, just a little. “Need Max?”
“If you’re going to persist in this battle against the undead, you need someone like him. It pains me greatly to admit it, but he’s the best Venator alive. He can be what I cannot.”
“Will not, you mean to say. You will not.”
Suddenly the door rattled, sending Victoria leaping guiltily off the bed, her loose bodice flopping. She’d locked it, and a good thing, too, for they could have been interrupted at a much more compromising moment.
Dear God, she hoped it wasn’t Max on the other side, she thought as Sebastian quickly buttoned her.
But when she opened the door, it was to find Ilias there. “The sun is up,” he said. To his credit, he barely glanced at Sebastian and his dishabille. “You are needed, Illa Gardella.”
“I must go,” Sebastian said, standing and swiftly pulling his shirt back on.
“Wait,” she said, noticing the mark on the back of his shoulder. “What is that?” It was a small black mark, intricate and circular. It looked like the tattoo Max wore, signifying his membership in the Tutela. But the symbol on Sebastian’s golden skin was much different, and smaller.
“Beauregard’s mark.”
He looked at her steadily, and she understood. Her stomach soured, sending a nasty taste into the back of her mouth. He might wear the amulet of the Venators, but he also wore the mark of the vampires. And he would not choose between them.
Before she could stop him, he pushed past Ilias and strode down the passageway, leaving Victoria to gather up her shoes.
“Why didn’t you send for me?” Max growled, trying to shake off the grogginess. “And what in the bloody hell did you give me last night?” He hadn’t slept so hard and dreamlessly for more than a year.Wayren, as quiet and calm as she always was, merely looked at him. Her face was a bit more drawn than usual, and instead of flowing in long strands over her shoulders, her pale blond hair was pulled back into a wrist-thick braid.
Max didn’t ache as much as he’d suspected he would, after two bullet wounds and innumerable punches and cuts. Perhaps whatever she’d given him to help him sleep had also leached away the pain. Regardless, as a Venator, he’d be completely healed within a matter of days.
Still. “I should have been there. So close to Santo Quirinus? And the Consilium? You could have sent Myza for me.”
“She’s a pigeon, Max. Myza wouldn’t have been able to wake you, even by tapping her beak on the window.”
“You made damned certain of that.” He sat up and gulped down a mug of watered wine. “You said there was something else.”