She had the mental gifts, not me. I had no idea how to contact her, but she could talk to me any time she wanted. But she hadn’t.
Why talk to someone who won’t even be around much longer?
Why get to know someone you plan to kill?
“Listen to me.” Louis-Cesare’s hands came up to frame my face, his eyes fiercer than I’d ever seen them. “I am here. I’m not going anywhere. And no matter what happens, we will find a way to deal with this!”
Looking into his eyes, I almost believed it. But I’d learned the hard way not to want what I couldn’t have, not to reach for things out of my grasp, not to hope . . . for anything. Or anyone.
Because who the hell would want to waste their lives on a crazy dhampir?
And for years, I’d been happy that way. Okay, maybe “happy” wasn’t the word, but content, at least. Once I’d thought that things were going pretty well if I had a full stomach, a place to sleep in safety, a job to do, and no frightening episodes for a while. That had been the good life; that had been all right.
So when had “all right” stopped being enough?
I had a feeling it coincided with meeting a certain blue-eyed vamp who had somehow retained a measure of innocence that was ridiculous, just ridiculous, in our world. He’d come out of nowhere with all these ideas, stupid, antiquated things like chivalry and nobility and decency, the stuff humans usually scoffed at, and that vampires . . .
Well, I doubted some of them even knew the words anymore.
I didn’t think some of them ever had.
And yet here was Louis-Cesare, a ridiculous contradiction of a creature, determined to ride or die when the latter was a lot more likely, not caring that his girlfriend had a split personality that could kill him, and just might for shits and giggles someday!
He was a naive fool, and I should have kicked him to the curb as soon as I met him.
But, instead, here I was hoping again.
So, who’s the fool now? I wondered, and pulled him down.
Chapter Seven
And, God, he was good, because Louis-Cesare was always good. Even in a tub partially filled with soapy water, because the drain mostly didn’t. But you couldn’t beat the size of the thing, which was six feet long and comfortably roomy, because the Victorians knew how to make ’em, yes they did.
Made you wonder what they got up to, all those upstanding citizens, when the curtains closed.
That, I thought, arching up.
If they were really lucky.
Oh, yes, just like that.
But good as it was, it wasn’t what I wanted tonight. Only I didn’t know what that was. I just knew there was something—
Something he seemed to understand, because he started kissing his way up my body a lot sooner than normal. Stopping at all his favorite spots until he paused at my neck, right over the pulse point. I swallowed, my heartbeat speeding up, but he didn’t bite. Just rested his lips against the hot, soapy skin under my hair, his own falling over my shoulder, his breath tickling my ear.
“What is it?” he murmured, because I’d tensed up, going rigid in his arms.
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. Just gripped his shoulders, feeling the hard muscle underneath as he slid against me—and, God, yes, that’s what I needed like the air I wasn’t getting in panted breaths. My ribs protested, but I didn’t care. My ribs could go to hell.
And then he pulled away again.
I stifled a scream—just. “What?” I breathed.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he said, frowning. “Not now.”
“Oh, yes, we should.”
But he was getting that look again, that stubborn “I know best” look that drove me half-mad even when I wasn’t already there. He was hard against my thigh, hot and huge and insistent. And so ready he was shaking with it. Typical of the man to be noble, even when need had turned to agony, too gentle or polite to take what he wanted.